Usamaru Furuya is an infinitely interesting artist. I like what I’ve read of his stories, too, but his art gets me in every single book that I’ve read by him. Be it the surreal pencil sketches that Picasso enters in Genkaku Picasso, the occasional random but elaborate 2-page nonsequitor illustrations in Short Cuts, or the amazing throwback work unlike his usual style in Lychee Light Club, every single one of his books is interesting to look at. He’s constantly using unusual imagery and a plethora of styles to convey the story visually, and there’s nobody quite like him when it comes to this. It’s fine art in manga form, and I wish like nobody’s business that more of his work would be licensed.

Palepoli is his first published volume of manga, and the best showcase for his visual vernacular. He also has a knack for elaborate visual puns and gags, and breaks the fourth wall constantly. Not with dialogue, but with image. It’s something one rarely sees.

You can read a handful of these in the compilations Secret Comics Japan and Japan Edge, but even with no knowledge of Japanese, Palepoli is worth owning. It’s just so much fun to look at. Still, I would dearly love to see a full English translation of it.

I’ve always really liked the cover to this book. It has as much to do with the inside content as anything, really, but the attention to visual detail starts here. The subject matter, and painting technique in particular, is meant to imitate a fresco. Even the title is webbed with cracks, like the plaster underneath is cracking.

There is a nice hardcover of this available, but I didn’t know that when I bought my paperback copy. Mine’s in bad shape, and will fall apart if I scan it, so I’m going to take photos of this one. Click on them to make the images larger, they’re worth looking at.

Palepoli is a collection of unconnected 4-panel strips. Normally, I hate 4-panel compilations, but Palepoli is the exception, largely for the reasons I mentioned in the introduction. Though there’s no ongoing narrative, there are several different “types” of strips scattered throughout the book. I’ll talk about some of the series below. They usually don’t run in a row, and there’s no pattern to them, but it’s always nice when you turn the page and see another surreal face strip, or yet another classroom bonding scene. The one above is… hmm. They are all night scenes that contain nostalgic-type dialogue longing for the mysteries of childhood, but there’s usually something slightly off about it. In one, a boy reflects on what his mother says about getting older, then looks up and decides he won’t be able to see ghosts anymore. In this one, it’s rabbit children that want to join their mother on the moon by jumping up to see her.

One of the more lengthy series of strips in the book is this one, which is about a man that witnesses a murder through his peephole, and the culprits that try to convince him to come out. Frequently the culprits will get run over by other murderers, and the methods for getting the man to come out are increasingly elaborate. Some strips includes angels, bands, threats about throwing out the wrong type of trash (a gag I’ll talk about later), and a variety of other methods of persuasion, but we never break from the first person fisheye perspective through the peephole. The jokes are funny, but it’s even more interesting that the unique perspective never wavers.

I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures of the Ghost of Rejection strips, another one of the more lengthy series in the book. They are all Furuya drawing a strip, interrupted by a specter that destroys the drawing somehow. The damage is reflected on the page that the strip itself appears on in the book, the implication being that the ghost is destroying that very strip (the strip is also clearly the same one that is being drawn in the strip itself). If the ghost crumples the page, the comic page itself is crumpled. If he lays a hand on it, the handprint appears over the fourth panel. sometimes the ghost’s finger will be shown pointing at the strip, hovering over and blocking out the art. He frequently draws graffiti on them, and one of my favorite instances is where several strips in a row appear with arbitrary numbers in their titles, then you get to the Ghost of Rejection strip where it’s revealed that the ghost is grading the strips. At the end, the ghost reveals itself to be Tezuka. I guess he would know.

This is a series where a young boy often stumbles upon life’s mysteries, unbeknownst to others. Here, it’s ants parting a puddle like the red sea. Sometimes he gets sucked into elaborate mandalas. In one, he can see every cell in his hand, which is of course lavishly illustrated, and in complete contrast to the weird and cartoony style he uses for children. He often meets gods from hindu and other faiths, and is eventually granted the power to destroy the world. If anyone can coax the peephole man out of his house, it’s Takashi!

Kuma-chan is also a popular strip subject. Kuma-chan is a cute but murderous bear that wields a butcher knife. Usually he appears in strips that are parodies of police shows (for whatever reason, I think the detective is frequently Colombo), but he pops up in all sorts of murder scenes and other places he shouldn’t, usually creeping out from behind something in the background. Here, the joke is that Kuma-chan only kills beautiful high school girls, and this girl gets a little over-excited when she realizes she suits Kuma’s taste.

I believe the record will show that I love any manga that deals directly with art history (see also, From Eroica With Love, In the Walnut). Furuya also has a few strips where he uses famous Renaissance paintings directly… in various ways. One of my favorites is one that uses a portion of Primavera by Botticelli, giving the goddesses teenage girl dialogue that eventually spirals into an ill-mannered fight. Another one of the goddesses from Primavera appears frequently to offer troubled souls a tough choice in various strips. I suspect the choice she offers might be a reference to similar dialogue found in video games like Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past or Harvest Moon, or whatever inspired similar moral choices (though the axe choice is almost directly from Harvest Moon, perhaps by coincidence). This one is Dead Christ, by Andrea Mantegna. The grief is interrupted by Hiroshi from Dokonjo Gaerou, a Shounen Jump manga from the early 70s. The plot of the manga is that Hiroshi trips and falls on a frog, who gets crushed into his shirt and offers advice. Here, he trips and falls on the head of Christ instead.

Furuya also likes to pay homage to older manga styles and popular titles. I mentioned Dokonjo Gaerou before, but there are more elaborate visual examples as well. In the above example, a Golgo 13 joke is never not funny, and not only do I like the terrible pun of Golgo 31/Baskin Robbins, I also like that the cute girl is sniped for the sin of embarrassing him. This one was in Secret Comics Japan, thus the English translation.

There’s an entire series of “garbage day” strips, named after the days of the week, and each one covers a different topic. Sometimes the topics are more general, like “cute trash day” or “existential trash day,” but they are also sometimes parodies of particular manga genres. He nails the styles pretty well in all these, and the completely unimpressed businessman in the corner makes them that much more surreal. Of course, my girly shoujo heart prefers the Heart of Thomas parody above.

I’m also up for invisible garbage day, if you are. I love that this was something that he was allowed to turn in. The joke is still funny, too.

Here, Furuya is taking the dialogue and… uh, the gist of Red-Colored Elegy. The homage here is all in the dialogue, though, as Furuya’s cartoony children stand in for the regular characters. The cartoony children are a throwback style to 50s shounen manga, I believe. I’m not sure if he’s parodying a particular artist’s style or not (sometimes I think they lean heavily towards early Tezuka), but I think that general style was a very popular look in the late 50s. Here’s the best example I could come up with in five minutes, from a pre-horror Kazuo Umezu volume.

And here’s both Kuma-chan and a panel that appears to be lifted directly from a Kazuo Umezu manga, or Furuya did a perfect imitation of one. They compliment each other well! These “chapter break” pages appear infrequently, and usually just use a theme from one of the strip series. As far as I can tell, they don’t really divide anything up in the book itself.

Manga isn’t the only area of pop culture that appears in this book. I think I’m probably missing out on a lot of the Japanese pop culture jokes, but it’s hard not to recognize Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in these creepily realistic portraits. They’ve tied a man up and are playing a word game with him. There are two strips to this one, and the second one is the man losing the shiratori game, but this one, for whatever reason, is more about the perspective from the cartoony man and the mirror behind the two actors.

My hands-down favorite series, visually, are these surreal portrait strips. I always associate these types of images with In Voluptas Mors, by Dali, but I wonder if there was a tradition of them before that. I think the Dali piece might be a direct influence here, because many of these are erotic. The one above isn’t, and is a rather contrary strip that forms the faces of Christ and Buddha using figures of death and destruction.

The erotic images are saved, of course, for the portraits of the characters from Doraemon. I love that they’re singing the theme song. But, I suppose, what else would they be doing?

This one is a reference to Tensai Bakabon, although I have no idea whether or not the dialogue relates to the series. I suspect it doesn’t, I think the joke is some sort of pun on the name of the deity in the last panel. You can also see more Botticelli on the page opposite this one, because I didn’t bother to edit the image.

And if you can think of a better way to end things than John, Paul, George, and Ringo… well, then I don’t know what to tell you.

I am completely and thoroughly obsessed with this book. Not only is the humor the kind of surreal, spot-on variety I enjoy, I can’t get enough of the hugely varied drawing styles and visual puns, and I feel like every time I crack it open, I find more cultural references I missed the first time around. I would dearly love to see a version of this book that is as thoroughly footnoted as Short Cuts was. I always hold out hope for this to be translated into English, because it is so unique and wonderful, and because we’ve already seen part of it. Maybe Viz somehow had to license it for inclusion in Secret Comics Japan, so maybe they’re the ones that have to publish it? Vertigo would be a good choice too, though, and somewhat more likely.

Guys. I don’t know about this. Part of me still remembers what a guilty pleasure this series can be. When it’s good, it’s fairly steamy, and part of me can’t help but get caught up in all the hot and heavy drama between Misao and Kyo.

But the other part of me just read this volume.

Now that… certain things have been taken care of on the Misao/Kyo side of the story, the plot shifts gears into a full-out war in the supernatural world. This is largely due to the efforts of Sho, Kyo’s evil brother. Not only is he fighting the other supernatural clans, he’s attempting to rally the village against Kyo and Misao, since Misao possesses the Senka Maiden blood that can cure all their ailments and Kyo insists that she is not to share it.

The problem is… Sho is out in the open, and the way the story goes, he’s not a bad guy. He just believes in chaos. Misao cries when she learns this, as if this explains why he would turn the village against his own brother. For some reason, the characters accept this as a valid course of action, and are upset because it goes against their goal of, you know, peace and whatnot. There’s also a lot of Misao crying about lots of other things, too. Sick villagers she can’t help. The way everybody gangs up on Kyo. The whole Sho situation, which again, is ridiculous. Misao isn’t doing a whole lot except stirring up controversy by just being there, and it doesn’t quite make sense that all the villagers do is congregate around her and glower, either. I was pretty tired of her just crying and being upset the entire volume.

Misao does have one great moment where she depreciates herself in order to make Kyo look better, and I thought that was interesting, but unfortunately, that doesn’t come up again in the conflict with the villagers and senka maiden. That would have been way more interesting than all the tears.

Part of the problem may be that the story is moving too fast through these parts. If more time was taken to develop this stuff, I bet I could believe it was happening. As it stands, everybody appears to be working themselves up again and again over the same stuff, and all Misao can do is cry. There are a couple scenes with her and Kyo that are a bit romantic, but it’s nothing like the previous volumes, and again, I think the story is setting the romance aside for awhile.

Unfortunately, while it still uses some folkloric references (I liked the casual reference to a han gon resurrection spell), it doesn’t really dwell on these things. This is just something that happens, or the way the world is, and not a whole lot of time is spent on it. That’s a shame, because the folklore is one of the more interesting things about this book, and it’s glossing over it in favor of some sort of chaos/war plot that is not going so well right now.

I’m beginning to worry that the series has lost it’s groove. I’m going to keep reading for another couple volumes to see how things go. But… I don’t know. I just haven’t been feeling these later volumes.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

I thought the story had skipped a bit weirdly in volume 1-2, so I was happy that this volume covered the “missing year,” where Kubo picked up Toki and the two get used to one another. The vehicle for the story this time is a little boy named Shota that lives next door to Kubo. He doesn’t have any friends, and winds up with Toki as a best friend by the end of the book. He’s a good narrator, though slightly too wise for his years at times.

It’s a pretty dark story, since Toki is dealing newly with his memory loss and has nobody but Kubo, a stranger, to help him. He doesn’t like Kubo and doesn’t trust him, and all his instincts tell him to run. He actually does run away, but Shota finds him passed out and helps Kubo bring him back. It’s Shota that helps Toki and Kubo get together. Toki won’t trust “adults,” so Shota is the one that brings him his meals and entertains him initially. All three characters have mini-drama events by the end of the volume, one of which is a beating for Kubo that involves all three.

This is a somewhat slow volume compared to the others, since there’s not an overarching yakuza plot or anything that Toki and Kubo are trying to unravel. It’s very character-focused, and the development happens slowly. I quite like it, and especially in a story like this about Toki and Kubo getting together. A lot of time and effort goes into the relationship here, which makes it that much better.

Again though, it took me two or three readings to parse some of the metaphors the characters were using, particularly anything Kubo says. What’s wrong with that guy? They’re nothing too complex, and I think I’m trying to read too much into them, but still, they slow the story down a bit for me. But that’s a relatively minor nitpick, and it’s hard to imagine that Wild Adapter would be as good without them.

I don’t have that much to say about this volume since the premise is so simple, and saying more would probably spoil it. As good as this was, it also suffers from being in between two really, REALLY great volumes. Volume 6 was a fine volume to leave off on, though.

Yay! The wait was shorter than I thought for the second volume of this series! Because I sadly stalk eManga, I found this when it was posted on Monday. Also, I feel like plugging Ludwig II, which was also posted and can be read very cheaply (400 points buys you a 300 page volume). I love You Higuri, and that’s my favorite of her work.

Anyway, I was somewhat disappointed by the second volume of this series. It’s still very good, and my beef is a petty and superficial one. It’s a bit of a spoiler, and also a deal-breaker, so I’ll keep it to myself. But let’s just say it doesn’t finish like a good romance manga should. And not in the exciting and different way, either. It just kinda… stops. On the other hand, the romance isn’t really the point here, it’s all about the coming-of-age story, which is still very good.

We get two more stories with Kei and Atsushi, and two short works at the end of the volume. My Caged Beast, about yakuza, wasn’t great, but Indigo Blue was wonderful. It features two best friends who appear to be running drugs on a lark. One is the front man of the operation, and the other constantly watches his back from the shadows in case something goes wrong. The backup also has a sleeping disorder, and will sleep for days at a time. He sleeps so soundly that the front man gives him elaborate tattoos to entertain himself. The story follows their operations in Mexico, and then moves to Japan for the second half. Neither of the men appear to be bad people. The front man seems to be doing it for the money and the fact he loves the Caribbean and hates Japan, and the backup just seems to follow along. I didn’t quite get their relationship, or what happened when things went south in the end, but it was still a beautiful story, one of the best BL one-shots I’ve read. Actually, the BL was only lightly implied, but I still loved it.

The Kei and Atsushi stories were good, too. The first was the final chapter in the story about Kei rejoining the track team, and the second was yet another story about gang members beating up Atsushi and Kei rushing in to save him. I was a little disappointed with it as a wrap-up for the series, but even so, there’s a lot of good stuff in there, and both stories were a lot of fun to read.

I do like the characters in this series a lot. While neither are developed too deeply, they definitely aren’t the hand-hold-y type of couple that one usually finds in these stories, and their fights amongst themselves are a refreshing change of pace. It’s less about their relationship and more about the trouble the two of them get into, and finding their place in life and whatnot. It’s not too heavy, or romantic, but I tend to like tough-guy stories like this, and it’s very good for that.

Highly recommended! I did like the first volume better, but it’s hard to find fault with more of the same type of stories, and this volume is worth a read for Indigo Blue alone.

Yeah… this is not for me. I was hoping that the Genma/Himi story was finished as of last volume, but I forgot Waki was a doll maker and could just bring Himi back for more abuse at Genma’s hands. This storyline lasts through more than half the volume. Genma shows up to abuse Waki, then abuses Himi after he’s revived with no memories. Then abuses him some more. Somehow, Genma is the sad one in this scenario. It has a happy ending, but man. I hated reading through these parts.

Abuse and sex aside (a difficult thing, since there’s a lot of both in the story), Genma can’t come to terms with Himi’s death, so he approaches Waki and asks him to “fix” Himi, his kami-sama. Himi can’t be resurrected because his core was destroyed, but Waki promises to do it anyway if Genma just wants Himi back in any form. So of course Waki resurrects Himi without any of his memories. He also lacks his personality. Genma, who’s rude and abrupt at the best of times, can’t take this change and casts him out. Himi doesn’t understand what he’s done to upset his master. It takes all the members of the Mitou house to show Genma the error of his ways.

And yes. While it does have the outline of a touching story… uh. Genma rapes Himi a lot, and the story makes no concessions for this. It just happens.

But that story is a flashback with minor characters, and it ends. The story comes back to the present, where we’re reminded that Genma is meeting Raizou for the first time, and that all the kami-sama and kotodama-sama are converging on the Mitou mansion for kami-sama maintenance. During this event, we meet Seiji, Tsukito, and Hatsuhi.

Now, the Seiji/Tsukito/Hatsuhi story is neither a flashback nor drama-tastic, and is exactly what the series needed after that Genma business. Seiji and Tsukito are twins that make a living doing voice acting for BL drama CDs. This is revealed in the most hilarious way possible, with Seiji giving Raizou a CD of their work without telling him what it was, then Raizou listening to it all the way through with Seiji, Tsukito, and Hatsuhi filling the roles of stereotypical terrible BL characters in his mind. It’s beautiful. Seiji and Tsukito both have a light touch, and also know how best to rattle the cage of the most powerful kotodama in the house.

And later, they have a very long threesome with Hatsuhi. This was shocking only because it made me realize I’d never seen a threesome in a BL book before. How has it taken so long? Surely this is the perfect solution to a romantic triangle in a smutty book? I suppose the romantic triangle isn’t all that prevalent in BL, either.

So yes, while I did like the Seiji and Tsukito story, sitting through the rest of the Genma story was not my idea of fun. I do have the other two volumes of this series, so I’m just going to finish the English translation of it despite my feelings. I do wonder what volume five will bring, though. More Seiji and Tsukito, or a different set of side characters? Maybe more about Ouka’s family, mentioned briefly here? They seem to have a love of cosplay, and that might be a lot of fun.

On a different note, it blows my mind that this ran in Dear+ magazine. I thought that was mostly hand-hold-y vaguely BL/shoujo? So I guess lightweight series like Color and Kyudo Boys (which is totally not BL) run alongside smutfests like Ze in Dear+? Well… the more you know.

This is actually Chinese, which is a little fun because these so rarely make it over here. It’s also in color, and very short. It leaves off in a strange place, but given the amount of time that’s elapsed since volume 1 was published, I’m guessing volume 2 is somewhat unlikely at this point.

It’s a strange story. Each chapter is a few pages long, and contains a self-contained story about vampire hunter and supernatural menace Mr. Han and his ward, Dynasty Tang. The chapters feature various supernatural monsters, like demons and a cerberus that transforms into a boy and whatnot, and are fairly comedic in nature. There’s not really an ongoing plot.

And… I don’t really have that much to say about it. I put off writing this up for months because it made almost no impression on me. It’s a short book, at only 120 or so pages, and you either like the stories or you don’t. They weren’t really my thing. The comedy wasn’t that great, and they were fairly superficial and often felt a bit rushed, as if trying to cram as much story as possible in the short chapter length (10 pages). It’s a fun and quick read for the right audience, though, and I did like the novelty of the digital coloring. I wasn’t a big fan of the art, though, which is a little webcomic-y and not that great, and the coloring style is completely different at the beginning and the end of the book. Unfortunately, the color palette isn’t all that great either, something I’m very picky about in color comics.

Tanemura debuted in 1997, and has been working steadily ever since. She specializes in shoujo fantasy/romance, and her work is very much a textbook example of exactly what a shoujo manga should be. Lots of romance, action, excellent character development, a little bit of humor, unusual plot twists, and very, very pretty art.

While it’s true that her character designs are in a Ribon Magazine house style (particularly the hair and eyes), even in her very first story she uses an unusually ornate style that, while a bit stiff, was still overflowing with cute details and lacked the usual composition and flow problems young artists often have. Over the years she polished her art and made it more organic, more detailed, and now lavishes a lot of attention in particular to costumes and settings. Her books really are a feast for the eyes, and few can measure up to the insane amounts of adorable that flow off of every page.

Her work always appears in Ribon magazine, and the age range on that tends to skew slightly younger. That’s apparent in her early work, but later series become surprisingly mature, and she has a depth to her writing that makes it appeal to shoujo fans of even my age. While most of her books were published by Viz and are still in print and widely advertised, still, Tanemura is worth discussing and celebrating, and this guide can hopefully shed some light on why.

I.O.N. (1 volume) – This volume tells the simple story of a girl named Ion. She’s a typical high school student, and has a rather superstitious habit of chanting the three letters of her first name when she needs a little luck. The boy she has a crush on is head of the Paranormal Research Club at school, and after touching a mysterious substance he was developing, Ion finds that her latent psychic abilities now unlock when she chants her name. She uses these powers for various bits of do-gooding, and a third boy shows up for a little bit of romantic triangle fun.

This was Tanemura’s debut volume of work, first appearing in 1997. While neither the plot nor the characters are anything special, the story is still fairly charming and a really fun read. It’s hard not to like Ion as a heroine, and while the love interest is hard to sympathize with, the romantic rival character adds some fun and is easy to root for. I was a little surprised with how much I liked this. Debut works tend to be rough, and it’s rare to see character development and story flow as good as this in such a young author (at the time, Tanemura would have been 18 or 19). I went into the volume not expecting much, and I usually dislike stories with psychic powers like this, so it won me over despite my negative outlook.

Short-Tempered Melancholic and Other Stories (1 volume) – This is a book of Tanemura’s debut short stories. The first story, “Short-Tempered Melancholic,” is about a female ninja with both an important guard duty and a boy she has a crush on. When the boy suggests that she’s not very feminine, the kunoichi decides to promptly give up on being a ninja. The two stories in the middle of the volume, “Their Love is Nonfiction” and “Rainy Days Are For Romantic Heroines” lean very heavily on standard romance plot devices, but use them to great effect. “Nonfiction” is about a pair of penpals that are about to meet face to face, but of course the heroine has used a photo of her much better-looking friend in her letters and is scared. “Romantic Heroines” is about a girl that conveniently forgets her umbrella in order to share with the boy she has a crush on. And Tanemura’s debut work, “Second Chance Love,” rounds out the volume with some fairly standard high school romance.

“Second Chance Love” is the weakest story in the volume, which isn’t much of a criticism. The rest of the stories here are great, and “Short-Tempered Melancholic” was so good that it feels like it would have been better expanded into a 1-2 volume series of its own. My favorite part of the volume was definitely the two stories in the middle, though, which told relatively old and tired stories in a very fresh and entertaining way. Tanemura writes really fun characters that are easy to root for, and that’s definitely a good skill to have when it comes to shoujo short stories. Again, it’s hard for me to believe that this volume was a rookie effort, and I wound up enjoying it immensely, which I so rarely do when it comes to shoujo short stories.

Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne (7 volumes) – Maron is on a task from God. God’s power has been scattered, and bits have been enclosed in works of art. In order to keep these bits of power from falling into the hands of demons, Maron transforms into Kaitou Jeanne and “seals” the works of art. But far from being easy, Jeanne has to dodge the police as well as a rival Kaitou named Sinbad. Not surprisingly, Sinbad’s alter ego is Chiaki, the irritating new transfer student in Maron’s class. Maron’s best friend Miyako is also the daughter of the police chief, who wants to stop the art thief Jeanne at all costs. But Jeanne has an ally in Finn Fish, the messenger from God who guides Jeanne to the bits of power, and conversely, Sinbad has his own little supernatural helper named Access Time. There’s more to the simple game of art thievery than it first appears, however, and Finn Fish and Access Time wind up being more than simple helpers…

I love this series, and it is my favorite of all the ones featured here. All the characters are easy to like, it’s got the right balance of humor, action, and romance, and the plot twists that come up later are not to be believed. Maron makes for a strong and believable heroine, and I liked that details of her school life, like a big rhythmic gymnastics tournament, were also a big part of the story. Several parts of the story get genuinely sad, and I still adore the ending, something I grew to appreciate more after I finished Full Moon. And I always admire a story like this that is clearly written for a younger audience, but has the power to really draw in all ages. When I can read and genuinely enjoy a magical girl series, it’s definitely something special. I’m a little ashamed to admit how much I like this, especially since it was the first of Tanemura’s series and the later ones are definitely better, but this one will always have a special place in my heart. Plus, it’s really hard to not like a series that has characters with names like Finn Fish and Access Time in it.

Time Stranger Kyoko (3 volumes) – Kyoko is princess of her country, but has been living undercover her entire life and enjoys a life at school as a regular student. But when her 16th birthday arrives, she can no longer pretend to be a regular girl and must take up the responsibilities of ruling the kingdom. However, the King offers her a way out. Kyoko can wake her twin sister Ui, who has been sleeping since she was born, by gathering 12 orbs from 12 Strangers. Kyoko gathers the first orb from Ui herself, a power the allows her to time-travel, and must search the kingdom for the other 11 orbs.

A 3-volume series with a plot about collecting 12 orbs is something I never thought would work. I disliked the first volume of this series, and had a rather pessimistic outlook for the other two. Much to my surprise, the story progresses very smoothly, and there’s enough time for Kyoko to collect all 12 orbs and have a rather astonishing finale to the whole thing. The resolution is a plot development that, to this day, shocks and delights me. I was not expecting such a twist, especially with such a generic fantasy plot in play. I did think the premise was a bit strange (“wake your sleeping sister so you don’t have to be princess! I don’t know why she’s sleeping! who cares if she’s suited to the job!”), and the 12 orbs thing is very generic. But it doesn’t play out that way at all, and this turned out to be a surprise favorite and among the very best of Tanemura’s work.

Full Moon (7 volumes) – 12-year-old Mizuki wants nothing more than to be a pop singer. However, her music-hating grandmother is very much against this career choice, and won’t even let Mizuki take singing lessons. Worse yet, Mizuki has throat cancer, which makes it difficult for her to speak, let alone sing. And if that wasn’t sad enough, two shinigami named Meroko and Takuto appear and accidentally tell Mizuki that she only has one year left to live. She begs the shinigami, and moved by her earnest wish, they use their magic powers to let her turn into 16-year-old Full Moon, a persona Mizuki uses to eventually become a pop sensation. But keeping a career as a celebrity secret from your grandmother when you’re 12 years old is a hard thing. Mizuki’s terminal cancer also complicates matters. And the shinigami are a whole different set of problems, from the fact they aren’t supposed to use their magic to help the dying to the way they became shinigami in the first place…

This series is all sorts of dark and depressing, if you couldn’t tell by the plot summary. But buried under all the tears, the initial theme is definitely one about living life to the fullest while you can, and I liked the way it chose to deliver that message initially. I also liked that it had a preordained sad outcome and a time limit, and watching everything leading up to that moment throughout the series was one of the most interesting things about it. And I know it sounds morbid, but the best part really was watching young Mizuki live her life the best she could while she was able. I was completely in love with this after one volume. But the story takes a turn for the ridiculous-even-in-context when the details of Takuto’s human life are revealed, and the ending was so disappointing it made me angry. This may be because I was expecting a particular ending the entire time I was reading it, and it may be simply because the early volumes were just so good, but I was furious when I finished that last volume. It’s been years, and I still haven’t forgiven Full Moon for its ending.

Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross (11 volumes) – Haine is a poor girl who is sold/adopted into a wealthy family, and winds up attending the high-class Imperial Academy for high school. She feels like a fish out of water, and is bullied mercilesslly, until circumstances send her into the elite student council, presided over by a boy named Shizumasa. Haine is shocked, because Shizumasa is the same boy who saved her years ago when she had been wasting her life in a dangerous teen gang. But Shizumasa doesn’t remember Haine at all, and his cold and distant demeanor are worlds away from the boy that gave her kind words years ago. Circumstances land Haine in the position of “Platinum,” the highest-ranked female member of the school and essentially Shizumasa’s boyfriend. While awkward at first, Haine uses the position to investigate why it is that Shizumasa has changed so much over the years.

I waited and waited for fantasy elements to pop up in this story, but they didn’t. This is a completely straight high school romance/drama, but don’t be disappointed. It has more soapy turns and backstory than you can shake a stick at, and is a ridiculously addictive read. I can’t honestly say it’s a must-read, and there’s nothing in particular I can point to that it does well. But Tanemura’s usual character development is in full force here, and the plot twists and dramatic romance bits make it more than worthwhile for any romance manga junky. I was also impressed that the energy that usually goes into the fantasy flourishes in Tanemura’s art was poured into the highly detailed and individualistic uniform designs and school setting. The Imperial Academy is a beautiful building.

Mistress Fortune (1 volume) – Kisaki and Giniro are a pair of 14-year-old psychics that fight threatening aliens named Ebe under the name Mistress Fortune. Their team is only one unit of an international organization that protects the world from the Ebe, and Kisaki and Giniro are proud to be part of it. But organization rules forbid the members to know each other in real life, and Kisaki finds herself in a bad spot when she begins to fall in love with Giniro.

I don’t know if it’s because the story was too stereotypical, or because I dislike psychic manga, but this was my least favorite by far of all of the books I’ve read by Tanemura. It’s true that the plot follows a pretty rigid structure – the story is told in three chapters, the first of which introduces the characters, powers, and organization; the second focuses on the romance between Kisaki and Giniro and reveals a sad backstory for the latter; and the third chapter is the big heroic finish. Sadly, there were no surprises for me after the first ten pages, and the twists are what I love best in Tanemura’s manga. But there are a couple of funny side stories with the same characters in the back of the volume, and I loved that the English language editor of the book (and all of Tanemura’s books), Nancy Thistlethwaite, was a character in the American branch of the psychic organization.

Sakura Hime (9+ volumes) – Tanemura’s current series, this one is a period piece set in the far past. Sakura is a lonely girl who was promised in marriage at a very early age to Aoba, the youngest son of the Emperor. For years, Sakura waits for Aoba to travel to her house and introduce himself, and she is overjoyed when she turns 16 and is finally invited to stay at the Imperial Palace and meet Aoba. However, Aoba turns out to be completely different than the gallant prince she’s imagined all these years. And if that wasn’t enough, Sakura also finds out that she’s inherited the cursed blood of the moon people, and turns into the monster-slaying princess Kaguya when she looks at the full moon. Because moon people are prone to turning into monsters and slaying loved ones, such powers and connections are a death sentence, and Sakura is hunted down like an animal. Later, she meets up with her long-lost brother, who has been planning his revenge on humanity.

As you might guess from the description, this series is much darker and more sophisticated than Tanemura’s other series. It’s got more depth and story going for it, as well, and Tanemura is taking her time introducing the cast, their various points of view, and the moon people/human conflict. I’m loving all the mythology she’s tying into the story, and the artistic flourishes she puts into the setting and costumes are exquisite. I have a problem with Aoba, who committed some irrevocably terrible actions early on in the story, and I’m also having a tougher time sympathizing with these characters (possibly because all the usual traces of humor are gone, but also maybe because this is the first time the story lacks a contemporary setting). However, this is shoujo fantasy at its finest, and while it doesn’t have the same sort of developed setting as, say, The Story of Saiunkoku, it’s still an easy series to read and like, and it’s difficult not to get caught up in the drama an action if you’re a fan of shoujo fantasy in the first place. I also like that it doesn’t get bogged down with a lot of real-world detail. Tanemura mostly just uses the period setting as an excuse to draw elaborate costumes.

Bah, I did it again. Volume 5 disappeared from my to-read stack, so when 6 came in this week, I wound up reading that one first. Sadly, I didn’t realize I had skipped a volume. To be fair, I was puzzled by the fact I didn’t remember Kohaku being in the middle of a fight, and I thought it was odd that the backstory about the ninja village would be skipped. But I still didn’t realize I missed a volume until I went to mark this off my to-read list at Librarything.

But anyway. I still love this series dearly, and I like volume five just as much as I did volume 6. It had the missing Kohaku fight, as well as all the ninja backstory you could want. Bizarrely, there is a fight with Byakuya and Maimai that is just glossed over when Byakuya uses a strange power and grows younger. But, you know, whatever. The story will probably go back to that later.

One thing that did disappoint me a little was when the realization hit that… well, we are simply working our way systematically through the backstory of all the characters as they fight while working their way up to Sakura. Knowing there’s a formula to it isn’t that fun, nor is the fact that the main story is on hold while we learn all about the bad guys and… well, why they aren’t bad guys, I guess? One of my other pet peeves is when characters are blaming themselves (and others blame them) for some catastrophic event, usually a death or the deaths of many, that turns out to not be their fault at all. And after everything is explained, and it’s clearly not the character’s fault, everyone continues on as if it is. This happens to one character each in this volume and the next. The character in this volume does appear to be forgiven as of volume six, but he still hasn’t explained himself, nor does anyone else know he’s not guilty. Whatever.

After having said that, though, I still enjoy this series immensely. I love to nitpick, but really, this is continuing to deliver some fairly solid shoujo action/fantasy, and I’m a sucker for these stories when they’re this good. The ninja fights here are interspersed with flashbacks to the days at the ninja village. We see young Hayate, Kohaku, and Shuri train with Aoba, and we also learn about their various love triangles, how Hayate was turned into a frog, and the mission that drove Shuri into the arms of Sakura’s brother. As you can imagine, tempers run high through this, since it was a childhood friend that betrayed Kohaku, and with the barest hint of romance scattered through everything… well, that makes it exciting in a way that only a shoujo manga can deliver.

There’s a 50-page bonus story in the back of the volume, called “White Rose Academy: Vampire Rose.” It’s… about what you’d expect from a shoujo one-shot, but I really loved it. Tanemura has a knack for telling this kind of girly story, and even the shameless vampire element wasn’t enough to deter me. It has an unusually passionate climax, something you wouldn’t normally see in one of her stories since she tends to write for a younger audience. That was a little different. It wasn’t anything too terribly shocking, but it was satisfying enough. And what can I say? Vampires, vampire hunters, and the supernatural are pretty safe subjects for me.

But really, the thing that got me most excited was the intro to this story, where Tanemura reveals the fact she loves reading about out-of-place artifacts. I want to read a story by her with that theme SO BADLY now.

I imagine I’ll probably write up volume 6 in the next couple days. I didn’t gush as much as I should about this volume, but really. It’s great shoujo fantasy. You usually can’t go wrong with Tanemura’s longer series, and this one is the best yet.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.

Okay. Volume 4 and volume 6 are my favorites in the series, because they deal with Toki and Kubo directly. This volume shows what happens when Kubo disappears and Toki has to get him back. Volume 6 is about what happens when Toki disappears and Kubo has to get him back. But that one is a very violent story for another day.

Interestingly, the past two volumes have been more about side characters than the boys themselves. Volume 2 had the lover of the W.A. victim, and volume 3 was about the reporter that the boys team up with to investigate the cult. This volume’s side character is a murderer, and we see him occasionally as the story makes concessions to the fact that guilt is driving him mad, but he doesn’t really have the starring role that the other characters did. This volume is all about Kubo and Toki.

While making a “sketchy” delivery for Kou, Kubo inadvertently winds up at ground zero of a murder. Kubo was delivering drugs to a prostitute, who is killed minutes before he shows up at the door. With no record of the man the prostitute was with, the police only have Kubo on the security tape and his prints on the buzzer. They bring him in, but unwilling to compromise Kou’s business by admitting to the delivery he was making, Kubo remains silent while the police torture him into admitting he was on the scene. This situation is made worse by the fact the police know he was a former yakuza boss, and has a prior for assault.

Meanwhile, he tells Toki to stay clear of the apartment, and nothing else. Toki gets angry, and begins to suspect that Kubo’s disappearance may have something to do with Anna, a girl that tries to get in touch with Kubo right before everything goes wrong. Toki doesn’t know anything about Anna, and while trying to figure out what happened to Kubo, realizes he doesn’t really know anything at all about Kubo. But that doesn’t stop him from digging to the bottom of the mystery, and it’s Toki’s detective work, along with Anna and the reporter from last volume, that help Kubo in the end.

Kotodama, the belief that something becomes true once you say it aloud, is one of the main themes in this volume. The murderer believes he was cursed into being a “small man” by something a grade school teacher said to him when he was a child. Kou mentions that Kubo doesn’t really believe in truth, that once something is said aloud it becomes a lie. And Toki doesn’t believe in kotodama, period. I wasn’t sure what to make of all this, particularly of the point that was made along the lines of Toki being Kubo’s truth. I know that there’s a shiny surface fujoshi meaning to it, but I wasn’t entirely sure what the metaphor was trying for. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that Kubo only relies on himself because he doesn’t really believe in anything else, so Toki has to be his “truth” and pull him out of this mess? There’s a conversation with Kou that makes sense in that light. Saying it aloud here makes it sound less sensical, but the dialogue in the book itself is a little… vague itself.

There are lots of beautifully ambiguous scenes. Aside from the stuff I mentioned above, other good ones are Toki and any other character. His interaction with Anna is especially ambiguous. He seems shocked by the fact Kubo has had sex with her, and tends to dodge her questions about who he is and what he’s doing. Anna also makes Toki uncomfortable in general. There’s more dodging of inquiries into Toki and Kubo’s relationship when the reporter asks what’s up with that. Whether it’s romantic or not, the ambiguity and the strong bond between the two is one of the best things about this series.

I am literally dying for more. Minekura is very ill, and I wish her the very best in recovering from her terrible illness. Drawing this and Saiyuki seem very important to her, and Wild Adapter recently changed publishers and was reissued in a new edition, so I hope her recovery has put her in a place where she can continue, if she wishes.

The main story in this volume is about the Jorogumo returning to the shop and asking something of Watanuki. It requires him to leave the shop, but we learn how exactly he handles such a task when it arises. The object of the Jorogumo’s desire also parallels Watanuki’s situation in several ways. It’s an interesting story, and the premise uses one of my favorite pieces of Japanese folklore. It reminds me a lot of the beginning of the series, save for the fact that everyone speaks in riddles and it was way less fun and more sad.

There are also lots of asides about Watanuki’s life in the shop. He’s getting better about his powers, he seems relatively aware of all the various goings-on and protocols in the spirit world, he doesn’t need glasses anymore, Domeki still comes over every day to take care of him, et cetera. Basically, the gist is that his magical power is growing within the shop while time passes outside the shop.

One thing that is bothering me about this later part of the series is that everyone seems to avoid talking about any subject directly. It can be an easy dodge, such as the Jorogumo constantly declaring “You aren’t as cute as you used to be!” when Watanuki side-steps her attacks, or it may be the general feelings and themes being conveyed through song. There should be a subtle air to such things… but I’m not really feeling it in Holic. It’s a little maddening to have to sit and decipher conversations, only to realize that, no, there’s not really a deep meaning to any of it. Watanuki loves Yuuko, and will wait as long as he has to at the shop, because it’s where he can be closest to her. Other little side-steps elude me, such as the reason why it’s bad news for Himawari to come to the shop, but I’m sure a re-read of the earlier part of the series would tell me why this is.

Sigh. I’m waiting for some major plot to start up, something exciting with Domeki and Watanuki to end the series. I’m not sure where it’s going from here, but hopefully something major will get underway next volume. While I haven’t been that impressed with the recent era of shopkeeping, I still enjoy this series immensely, and am looking forward to its ending.