The Manga Test Drive

After yesterday's review, I'm willing to look at some better smut. So let's take a look at a classic yaoi title! Lord knows it can't be worse!

KIZUNA: BONDS OF LOVE (Kizuna: Koi no Kara Sawagi), by Kazuma Kodaka. First published in 1992, and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Kei Enouji and Ranmaru Samejima have been a couple for years. They got together back in high school, when Ranmaru was a kendo champion and Kei was struggling to rebel from his yakuza roots. While Ranmaru's kendo career was destroyed by an accident, the two have managed to survive and maintain their romance. Things become complicated when Kei's half-brother Kai comes back into Kei's life, and it turns out that Kai is still nursing a massive, hero-worshipping crush on Ranmaru. Ranmaru is now caught in the conflict between the two, each of them determined that they are the only one worthy to possess Ranmaru and willing to employ all sorts of sneaky tactics to get their way.

STORY:

Kizuna is one of the few yaoi titles you could reasonable classic a classic. It's relatively old for such a young genre, the first major work from one of the genre's best known mangaka, and it's also one of the few yaoi titles to have been license-rescued. It's also a melodramatic piece of crap, one that's too sleezy and lifeless to be as intense as it wants to be.

First of all, even for an uke Ranmaru is incredibly passive. He rarely protests when Kei and Kai start fighting over him, apparently content to be used like an object for their own selfish pleasures. Mind you, he rarely seems to protest anything. As such, he seems to be perfectly fine with Kei raping him in the kendo club practice room. He's a-OK with his professor trying to drug him and rape him at a gay club, and he never says a peep when Kai takes advantage of him while still under the effect of the date rape drug. Ranmaru seems to be blasé about everything in his life. He doesn't even get upset over losing his ability to perform kendo, which you'd think would be a big, even traumatic thing. I get that he's meant to be the cool-headed contrast to Kei, but cool-headed is not the same as emotionally inert.

Kei and Kai are certainly more forceful, but as characters they're no more endearing than Ranmaru. Both of them are thuggish brats who take what they want at will and punish others as they see fit for getting in their way, all in the name of 'protecting' Ranmaru. They're both stereotypical semes and I can't take either of them the least bit seriously. Each of them rapes Ranmaru at least once, although Kai is slightly more loathable for doing so while Ranmaru was under the influence. Both of them are locked in this ongoing grudge over who is the true illegitimate son of their father and who made the other's life miserable and neither has the slightest compunction about using Ranmaru to make their point. Kai flat-out stalks both Ranmaru and Kei, and it's only for this reason that Kai is able to stop Ranmaru's professor from his attempted date rape. If I haven't made the point loud and clear, they're both awful, utterly unsympathetic characters and I wished failure upon them both. The only time Kodaka could muster any sympathy for them is in a side chapter about wee little Kai wanting his dad to visit his school for Parents' Day and a sympathetic goon trying to comfort him by filling in has his "big brother." That would be incredibly sweet were it not for fact that Kodama tries to play it up as a romantic gesture in the end, which makes the whole thing in retrospect incredibly creepy.

I am genuinely baffled as to why people consider Kizuna to be such a classic. It's a very basic love triangle that's populated by two rapey douchebags and a total doormat that only moves forward because of a lot of ham-fisted, exploitative twists. I've read later works by Kodaka, so I know that she was (and is) capable of better stuff, so why do people continue to hold this up as her masterwork?

ART:

I will grant Kodaka this much: she is a good artist, and her skills were already quite refined even at this early stage of her career. Kodaka apparently used to be an assistant for Sanami Matoh, and if you look closely at her character designs here, you can see a slight resemblance to Matoh's own style, particularly in the eyes. That being said, Kodaka's style is far less dated and a lot more naturalistic. She also tends to draw them leering in such a way that it makes me think that rapeface runs in Kei and Kai's family. Kodaka's approach to the sex scenes is fairly mundane, being neither overly explicit nor tender and fluffy. If anything, they tend to go on a bit too long and they start to get tedious after a while. Still, she's got a good grasp on anatomy, far better than most of her contemporaries. She's clearly not so comfortable with the action scenes, which is why I suspect she tends to obscure them so much with speedlines, and her backgrounds are just kind of blasé and murky. I may have my misgivings with this series, but most of them do not lie in the artwork. If anything, the artwork is the highlight of the series. Yaoi art in general doesn't tend to age well, but Kodaka's art was (and remains) some of the best that the genre offers.

RATING:

Kizuna is a lame melodrama populated by a trio of terrible characters, and the only thing that saves it from a red light is Kodaka's solid artwork. I'm glad that she got better as a writer in later years, but it's not worth it to revisit this work.

This series is published by Digital Manga Publishing, and formerly by Central Park Media under their Be Beautiful imprint. This series is complete in Japan with 11 volumes available. CMP published 9 volumes, all of which are currently out of print. DMP published all 11 volumes in 2-in-1 omnibuses, and all are currently in print.

Ok, I've had enough of wallowing in bad smut. Time to focus on something good, and what can be better than a fantasy shoujo series from CMX?

APOTHECARIUS ARGENTUM (Yakushi Argent), by Tomomi Yamashita. First published in 2004, and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

In the kingdom of Beazol, Princess Primula watches over the kingdom while her father heads off to fight another battle with one of the neighboring kingdoms. Her only company are the servants in the castle, but the only one she could call her friend is Argent. He was formerly her food taster and now he runs an apothecary on the edge of city. After the two discover a poisoning plot against Primula, she has him reinstalled as the royal doctor, despite Argent's protests. What Primula doesn't know is that he is a Basilisk, an assassin so soaked in poison that his very touch is toxic. Thus Argent finds himself torn between his dedication to Primula and the ill intentions of those who want to use Argent as a weapon.

STORY:

Apothecarius Argentum is simply one of those well-constructed shoujo fantasy stories that CMX seemed to specialize in. It's got interesting characters, political intrigue, a touch of romance, and it even dares to tackle topics like free will, prejudice, and Argent's conflict over his past and his present.

Argent seems like a rather serene, all-knowing sort of bishonen at first, but his placid demeanor conceals a lot of inner torment and struggle. We spend a fair bit of time inside Argent's head, so we see how miserable his past was, how Primula came to trust in him, and how that trust motivates him to be a better man. His angst is never piled on too thickly, so Argent's struggle never comes of as maudlin or over-the-top. In contrast, Primula is more or less as she appears to be. She's a spunky tomboy whose personality chafes a little with the responsibilities and isolation that come with being a princess. She is blessed with quite a bit of common sense, though, and the friendship between her and Argent feels very realistic compared to what one usually sees in shoujo. Sometimes they might butt heads over an issue, but there's also a lot of sweetness and supportiveness between them. Most importantly, she treats him like an equal - not a subject, not a servant, but as a trusted friend. There are hints of deeper feelings between the two, but even as things are they make a great platonic pair.

There isn't much to say about the rest of cast save for the king himself. He's made out to be a tyrant, but we see that he's a bit more complicated than that. He's a total pushover when it comes to his daughter, but he also makes it clear that he still considers Argent to be a deadly trump card that he intends to keep close by for his own purposes. It's not so much that he puts on a friendly, loving face for his daughter, it's that his love for her is just as much a part of him as his darker, more scheming qualities, and that uncertainty makes him far more intriguing that any of the one-note villains that come for Primula. If this all sounds a little aimless, it's mostly because this volume is more about establishing Argent as a character and the relationships around him than it is kicking off any sort of grand plot. It's time well spent, though, as Apothecarius Argentum does a great job building up Argent and the world around him and it makes me excited and intrigued to see what happens to them next.

ART:

Apothecarius Argentum's art is typical of the genre, but it's solidly drawn and good looking. Yamashita takes a light hand with the line work, so everything is drawn in a light and pleasing manner. Everything else is fairly by the book - the character designs, the composition, the backgrounds. That's not to say that it is boring, but merely that Yamashita's style isn't all that distinctive and she plays things rather safe when it comes to the art. She's clearly put most of her effort into the actual story, and the art does a perfectly fine job supporting just that.

RATING:

It's the exceptional character writing that pushes Apothecarius Argentum into a green light. It's a little more compelling and complex than one usually sees in this sort of shoujo story, and I'm eager to follow Argent and Primula on their next adventure.

This series was published by CMX. This series is complete in Japan with 11 volumes. 8 volumes were released and all are currently out of print.

You know, I have waited far too long to cover this manga, especially when you consider that I use its lead character as my icon both here and at Infinite Rainy Day. Let's dive into the rousing (if slightly continuity addled) world of Read or Die!

READ OR DIE - R.O.D. (Rido oa Dai), written by Hideyuki Kurata & drawn by Shutaro Yamada. First published in 2000, and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

Yomiko Readman is a young woman with an immense love of books and a special skill. She can manipulate paper at will, and the only limit to her power is the amount of paper available and her own imagination. She also serves as a secret agent to an equally secret library, one that is tasked with protecting the world's rarest and most valuable books. Her latest assignment gives Yomiko the chance to meet her favorite author, the teenaged prodigy Nenene Sumigawa. When an insane fan kidnaps Nenene with the intention of forced marriage, it's up to Yomiko to save the day.

STORY:

It can be hard enough to review a manga based on a series without turning it into a list of "The show did X, but the manga does Y!" Now imagine how hard it is to review this one when you take into account the continuity of the R.O.D. franchise. It started as a light novel series, which in turn became a 3-episode OVA. There was a spinoff manga with a completely different story which became a full-length TV series that was in the same continuity as the OVA. Then there's this manga, which continuity-wise sits somewhere between the OVA and TV show but tells a completely different story in turn. This sounds horribly convoluted, but the good news is that you don't really need to know a lick of it to enjoy this manga on its own. Even a newbie to the world of R.O.D. can appreciate it as the silly, over-the-top bit of action it was always meant to be.

I think the ultimate appeal of Read or Die, regardless of what format it comes in, is Yomiko herself. She's at once cheerful, naïve, resourceful, and proactive. She's the kind of woman who can all but squee over her favorite books but when the stakes are high, she can still protect herself and save the day by turning something so thin, fragile, and common into her weapon. She's not a love interest, she's not a sidekick, she is her own woman. Best of all, it's all done in a humorous and surprisingly light manner, which helps to minimize the disconnect between the scenes between Yomiko and Nenene and all the secret agent stuff. Her friendship with Nenene is rather adorable in its execution, as the rather prickly Nenene warms up to Yomiko. Mind you, I can hardly blame her for doing so when Yomiko herself is so unguarded and such a hopeless fangirl. Of course, the creators are not above using their friendship as an excuse for some yuri-tinged fanservice, although it never gets too intrusive or exploitative.

The action pieces are just as equally entertaining. Kurata seems to be a guy whose approach to action is go big or go home, and he certainly delivers on that front. From the beginning we get things like fights on top of a moving truck, and it escalates until Yomiko has to face off against a fire user who acts like your standard sexy evil seductress and looks like a fire-themed version of Cutey Honey. Meanwhile, Nenene is having to grapple with a megalomaniacal fan who wants to control his favorite author so that together they can create what he deems the ultimate literary work. It's clearly a riff on Misery, but again he's taken it to almost cartoonish extremes, which keeps it from getting too dark and keep it in line tonally with the rest of the volume. Does all of this story make sense? Oh goodness no. Does it matter in the end? Not really. Read or Die only wants to be big, dumb shonen fun, and it succeeds in a big way at just that.

ART:

Yamada's artwork is a perfect match to the story, as it is just as fun and lively as the story itself. Every character, hero and villain alike, are hammy as hell and seem to bounce and bound through every panel and page. The character designs are actually pretty nice, as they're round and lush while still wild and expressive enough to fit with the story. He's not above throwing in some cheesecake, but thankfully the ladies all possess proportions that can be found in this universe. What, you though there were plot reasons for Yomiko to play dress-up at Nenene's place? The only place where he plays things conservatively is with the panels. He tends to keep them small, and to keep things from getting too cluttered he tends to leave the backgrounds out. This allows everything to flow smoothly from panel to panel, and the end result is just as much of a delight to look at as it is to read.

PRESENTATION:

There's actually some nice commentary from Kurata talking about the series as well as some comments on Yomiko's various redesigns from light novel to screen to manga. There are also some sketches of her done by some of the animators from the OVA as well.

RATING:

Read or Die is a silly little shonen romp with a great heroine, a lot of crazy action, and plenty of spirit and liveliness to go around, and it's an utter delight to read.

This series was published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available. All 4 were published and it is currently out of print.

Whatever happened to shonen-ai? Once upon a time we used to get manga like FAKE and Gravitation, series that hinted at gay romance, but were focused first and foremost on telling a story. With the flood of yaoi titles we got in the 2000s, it seemed like the concept had been all but lost...at least, until fairly recently.

NO. 6, based on the light novel series by Atsuko Asano & drawn by Hinoki Kino. First published in 2011, and first published in North America in 2013.

PLOT:

No. 6 is a bustling, futuristic city where crime, illness, and unhappiness are all but unknown. Amongst its residents is 12 year old Shion, who is on the fast track to a glorious academic career until the fateful night he left his bedroom windows open during a storm. That allowed Rat, a strange and heavily injured boy, to enter, and Shion sees to his wounds before Rat leaves. Rat is a fugitive, though, and this single act of compassion ruins Shion's life. Four years later, his family has been forced into the slums while Shion now must work as a maintenance to help his mother get by. He stumbles upon a bizarre and deadly secret at his job. Now Shion is the fugitive, and Rat has returned to show him the truth about No. 6.

STORY:

If you've been keeping up with YA fiction these days, then the premise of No. 6 is probably going to feel kind of familiar to you. You've got a dystopian community where the haves and have-nots are separated, where all sorts of future tech is present and possible, and where a single Chosen One rises up against their overlords and leads the way to a better future, usually with a love interest at their side. Just because the concept may not be all that original doesn't mean that it isn't any good. No. 6 manages to make those well-worn ideas feel relatively fresh while delivering a bit of subtle fujoshi fanservice.

In all fairness, Shion and Rat make a good couple. While their personalities are a bit lightly sketched out so far, their skills and knowledge complement one another. Even their story arcs complement one another, as Shion's selfless act comes full circle when Rat comes back to help him years later. Yeah, it's more than a little convenient, but it's satisfying nonetheless. There are certainly things about them that I wish they would change. For example, Shion is so ridiculous happy-go-lucky that not even being forced out of his home and school and everything he knows isn't enough to phase him, and he's also shockingly oblivious to the fact that his childhood friend Sufa is desperately trying to hit on him. Then there's Rat, who must be forced at every turn to vaguely explain even the slightest thing, and it feels less like a character quirk and more like a plot gimmick that allows the author to stretch things out as long as possible. At least he's well-read for being such a stubborn kid. He even manages to slip in a quote from MacBeth that's not overused and is relevant to his and Shion's situation.

I was a little surprised to learn that this was based on a light novel series. It's true that knowing this makes the parallels to current YA trends a little more obvious, but No. 6 has been adapted well from the page. You don't see the sort of obvious infodumps that so many bad light novel-to-manga feature. No one stops the story dead in its tracks to explain the rules of the world or their epic backstory, a fact for which I am very thankful. As for this future world, it honestly doesn't seem all that bad. Yeah, it's built upon a foundation of lies, totalitarianism, and exploitation of the masses, but not even the 'bad' side of town seems all that bad for what is meant to be a run-down slum. After all, Shion and his mom adapted incredibly fast to their lot and she even managed to set up a nice bakery. They don't even do that much to keep the two worlds seperate, as Shion and Sufa are able to maintain their friendship even after he's been banished to the slums. It's only near the end of the volume that the true horror of Shion's world comes into focus as Shion discovers that their oppression comes with a side of biomedical experimentation. It's a neat twist, but it's not enough to completely overcome the mildness of this dystopia.

I don't want to come down too harshly on this series. The story might be kind of derivative, but it's all put together in a way that flows smoothly and gives it a good foundation upon which to build some deeper characterization and world building. It's not perfect, but the first volume of No. 6 is off to a promising start.

ART:

Kino's art is much like the story in the sense that it's pleasant and well-crafted, but isn't necessarily all that remarkable or distinct. His character designs are pleasant enough to look at, and I will say that he does a good job at aging up Shion and Rat from 12 to 16. A lot of manga artists struggle to convey age; at most, they tend to add a few crows' feet and call it a day. Here, the differences are just enough to visually convey the passage of time, but the changes aren't so radical that the two become two completely different-looking people. The backgrounds are all nicely rendered and there's a clear difference between the sleek, vaguely futuristic places of No. 6 and the darker, shabbier, and more organic forms of the slums. It's just not shown off very much until the very end, when the scenery opens up into a grand vista. If there's one thing that Kino does excel at, it's fujoshi fanservice. There's never any sort of explicit action, but Kino does love to take every and all opportunity to have Rat pin Shion against the nearest flat surface as he yells or threatens Shion in a suggestive manner, a move that's only enhanced by the noticeable size difference between the two boys. It's an understated touch in what is otherwise a nicely drawn but otherwise unremarkable book.

RATING:

No. 6 won't revolutionize the world, but its story of two boys fighting back against a cruel world makes for a neat and mildly slashy bit of science fiction.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics. This series is complete in Japan in 9 volumes. All 9 have been published and all are currently in print.

You know, I don't cover a lot of Dark Horse comics here. I need to change that, so let's start with a quiet little gem from their library of titles.

TRANSLUCENT (Toransurusento: Kanojo wa Hantomei), by Kazuhiro Okamoto. First published in 2005, and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Shizuka Shiroyama would be, under any other circumstances, a shy but otherwise normal schoolgirl. She has a few friends, she has an interest in theater, and a lot of the usual teen girl insecurities. She has one very big, very unique problem, though - she is literally disappearing. She has Translucent Syndrome, a mysterious condition that appears during puberty. It can cause random body parts to partially or fully disappear, and over time the translucence can become permanent. At least Shizuka has the support of her friends like dorky little Mamoru or pretty, popular Okouchi. Still, she must come to terms with her body and her condition, as well as how she and other people perceive herself in both a figurative and literal sense of the word.

STORY:

Don't worry yourself with asking questions about why and how Translucent Syndrome exists, as the story isn't interested in explaining and quite frankly it's not concerned with the science behind it. No, what Translucent is interested in is using Shizuka's condition as a rather on-the-nose metaphor for teenaged insecurity. In lesser hands this concept could become incredibly melodramatic, but Okamoto wisely takes a low-key approach to things and the end result is a very touching manga.

Shizuka may disappear from time to time, but her biggest problem is that as a person, she's kind of flat. She can't entirely help it, as Shizuka tends to be introverted by nature; she would be the kind of kid who would fade into the background even if she didn't have this condition. She does try to get better, though. She tries to act, against the wishes of her father who simply wants to keep her safe and sound at home. She talks with her doctors about her future and her condition, and she gets some perspective from Keiko, a glass blower who has gone entirely invisible. Her snarky pessimism is a stark contrast to Shizuka's timid optimism, but she can give Shizuka some perspective on living one's adult life with this condition.

What really helps to bring her out of her shell are her new friends, and Mamoru in particular stands out for his efforts. He's such an endearing little dork, and as much as he's clearly crushing on her he really does try to support her and make her happy. He even takes up an interest in stage makeup to help her out. He's balanced out by Okouchi, who starts out envying Shizuka for being able to go unnoticed but comes around quickly to becoming her friend. She's mostly there to help give Mamoru a smack when he's being especially oblivious or losing himself too deeply in his geekiness. They help to give Shizuka a sense of stability and positivity, both of which go a long way towards making her a happier and more frequently visible girl.

The approach Okamoto takes towards her story is one that's closer to a slice-of-life story than it a more tradionally structured drama. She's simply content to let Shizuka meander through her everyday life and conversations, and while there are misunderstandings and arguments, she doesn't play them too hard for melodrama. The only time she indulges in that is a tonally weird moment near the end where Mamoru literally has a fistfight with Shizuka's dad in the rain. This moment does serve its purpose story-wise but it comes out of nowhere and feels ridiculously over-the-top compared to everything else. Otherwise, this is just a quiet, somber story about a young girl slowly and gradually reaching out to the world before she might literally disappear from it. Okamoto takes great care with the characters and she doesn't hammer in the morals or the metaphors, however obvious they may seem. It's that delicate approach that makes Translucent such a fine work in the first place, and it's kind of criminal that such a story has been so overlooked by so many.

ART:

Okamoto's artwork isn't the sort that impresses you at first glance. The character designs are plain and very realistic. The panels and pages alike are equally plain - there are no dramatic angles, no splash pages, no layers, just a lot of mid-level shots that are set in a lot of ordinary homes, streets, and school rooms. What does impress you is Okamoto's skill for body language and expression. Everyone moves and acts in a very nuanced manner and he can get across a lot of mood just through body language. This is doubly important in a work where some characters are not always completely visible, so even getting things across through the shift in someone's clothing or an object they carry is crucial. He also handles the varying degrees of translucence well. Sometimes Shizuka appears in vague outlines, and other times her limbs will simply fade into blank space. Ultimately his art is quiet but highly skilled, and it's a good fit for the story.

RATING:

Translucent is a sadly ironic, considering how little-seen it is by most manga readers. That's really quite a shame, as it's a lovely and quietly dramatic slice-of-life story about a girl coming to terms with a chronic condition and learning to find some happiness in life in spite of it. It's got enough direction to keep it from feeling aimless and it's restrained enough to give the bittersweet story substance.

This series was published by Dark Horse Comics. This series is complete in Japan with 5 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently out of print.

I've always felt a little bad for Go!Comi. They were one of the many B- and C-list manga publishers from the 2000s, and their gimmick was that they focused exclusively on shoujo. They did have good enough taste and luck to bring out Afterschool Nightmare in full, but a lot of their titles simply flew under everyone's radar and many were never finished. Even manga like today's selection, a collaboration between a classic shoujo writer and a popular BL artist, suffer a similar fate.

CROWN (Kuraun), written by Shinji Wada & drawn by You Higuri. First published in 2005, and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Mahiro Shinomiya has had a hard life. After her parents died, she was forced out of her home by grasping, scheming relatives, and now she must work multiple part-time jobs just to get by. The only mementos she has of her past are a photo of her parents, a pendant with mystic powers, and vague memories of an older brother. That same older brother, Ren, comes charging back into her life, revealing himself to be a professional mercenary. It turns out that he's come back for more than just a family reunion. He and Mahiro are the heirs to a foreign kingdom, and the pretender to the throne is determined to eliminate both of them by any means necessary. Now Mahiro, Ren, and his partner Jake must work together if they are to survive.

STORY:

Shinji Wada is something of a legend in Japan, having created the long-running shoujo series Sukeban Deka, about a delinquent girl who solves mysteries. He hadn't done a manga in over a decade before starting this one, but if this story is anything to go by, he hadn't lost his touch. While things can get a bit clichéd at times, Crown is a highly entertaining and timeless sort of tale.

It does start off a bit roughly. It's never a good sign when one needs background characters to explain the lead's backstory to the audience, and it's not a good sign when your lead's backstory is so damn tragic that she gives Cinderella a run for her money. That backstory sets the tone for Mahiro for the rest of the story, as someone who suffers tragically in a noble manner. If she were any more innocent and sweet, she would have a big poufy ballgown and would be swishing around with all the other Disney princesses. She even has a magic artifact, the titular gem which does pretty much whatever the plot needs it to do. It can divinate romance, it can find hidden entrances, it can even define a person's moral character, and it serves as both the resident Macguffin and a Get Out of Plot Complications Free card. So yeah, Mahiro is a little bit useless and a little bit juvenile for a heroine, and I do wish she had more of a grasp on the severity of her situation or at least wasn't quite so dependent on her brother, even if he can kill a man multiple times before he hits the ground.

At least Ren and Jake are relatively likeable. They're both cool and competent but they never come off as superhuman. Ren himself is charming and affable while Jake is more awkward due to his less than stellar ability to speak Japanese and because he's clearly growing a bit sweet on Mahiro. They do have a shockingly blasé attitude about collateral damage, though. At one point they literally fake a hostage situation in a plush Roppongi Hills building, only to blow said building sky-high in the name of stopping their enemies and exposing a gun trafficker. Their actions may be in the name of good and self-preservation, but it's kind of weird how the story just blows off major actions like that as no big deal, diving straight back into Happy Family Time like it's no big deal.

Maybe their acts would have a greater sense of gravity to them were the villians not quite so broad. Mahiro's adoptive parents are the sort of family you usually only see in Roald Dahl books. They're all fat, coarse, greedy bastards who think nothing of trashing the place or wasting Mahiro's inheritance, and they're dispatched so fast from the story that it's almost laughable. The proper villain is the false queen of Ren and Mahiro's made-up kingdom. She wants them out of the picture because she's a greedy racist and she needs Mahiro's Macguffin pendant to legitimize her claim to the throne. That's why she's perfectly ready to spend no small amount of money on weapons and mercenaries to make it all happen. If she were more blatantly, nakedly evil, she would have a top hat, a cape, and a handlebar mustache to twirl. The only evil person who gets any sort of character is the ludicrously named Chrondrite Bourne. He's another ex-mercenary who holds a grudge against Ren and Jake, but he gets disarmed through quick action and Mahiro's infallible belief that he's a good guy deep down. Just like that, he's on their side, and at this point the story betrays that it's shaping up to be a bit of a reverse harem.

What's really strange is that for all its faults (and as I've noted, it has many), Crown is a genuinely enjoyable story, successfully merging shonen-style military action with shoujo fluff. It's just that it falls apart the moment you start to look deeper. The leads are pleasant but insubstantial. The action is thrilling, but the villains are ridiculous and any real threat to our leads gets explained away in an instant. It's content to coast on the thrills of big action pieces and pretty guys but not to turn them into something truly memorable.

ART:

You Higuri is no stranger to this blog. She's mostly known for her BL works, and even those that aren't explicitly yaoi tend to retain a bit of slashiness. Here she's working solely as an artist, though, so the hoyay is all but nonexistent. Still, she was a good choice for this work, as her appealingly attractive characters and her nicely rendered backgrounds make this a generally good-looking work. I still suspect that Chrondrite is nothing but a rip-off of Full Metal Panic's Sosuke Sagara, though. He's got the same hair, the same cross-shaped scar on his cheek, and the same profession, and that similarity would have only been more obvious when this first came out, as that particular franchise was still going strong at the time. Higuri also apparently has something against fat people, as both Mahiro's adoptive family and the evil pretender queen are distinctly heavy set for no particular reason other than we're mean to associate non-pretty people with evil. Higuri does use a lot of dramatic angles and lighting throughout the manga, but Higuri is clearly more comfortable drawing cute girls and sleekly handsome guys than she is with drawing action scenes. She tends to skip over the actual fights and feats of violence, so Ren and Jake's actions come off like a before and after montage. That's kind of a problem when this is meant to be an action series. Higuri can draw really attractive art, she just can't really make it flow in a way that looks and feels exciting.

RATING:

Crown can be good fun if you let it, but neither the story nor the art stand up to any sort of close scrutiny. The sum of Crown is far greater than its parts.

This series was published by Go!Comi. This series is complete in Japan with 6 volumes available. 2 volumes were published and both are currently out of print.

As we approach June, we launch head-first into wedding season. Since I already covered Wedding Peach, there's really only one other wedding-themed shoujo series I could review.

V. B. ROSE (V. B. Rozu), by Banri Hikada. First published in 2004, and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Ageha loves and idolizes her older sister Hibari. That's why she is aghast when Hibari announced that she is pregnant and marrying her long-time boyfriend - to her, her idol has been ruined. Hibari manages to bring her sister around to the idea when she offers to let Ageha help her find a wedding dress, since Ageha has such a keen interest in sewing and fashion. Together the two go to Velvet Blue Rose, an exclusive boutique run by the handsome duo of Yukari and Mitsuya. When one of them hurts their hand, Ageha offers to fill in for him, and as she works on her sister's dress she comes to terms with Hibari and her own ideals.

STORY:

I've read a lot of middling shoujo stories since I started running this blog, but few annoyed me in the way that V. B.Rose did, and all the blame lies entirely on its heroine. Ageha spent the entire volume acting like an insufferable brat. She's not just overprotective of her sister, she's outright entitled and has put her sister on this impossible pedestal of perfection. She treats her sister's pregnancy and marriage like her own failing, and every single time she started to angst I wanted to reach through the page, shake her and scream "YOU ARE NOT YOUR SISTER'S KEEPER!" Some would try to write off Ageha's drama queen moments as mere teenage melodramatics, but being a teenager is no excuse for being a selfish brat. It's the sort of drama that could (and is) solved by having a proper conversation with her sister about her feelings, and it's sad that the whole story centers on such contrived melodramatics.

Considering what a brat Ageha was for most of this volume, it's easy to forget that there's also a half-baked romance plotline going on as well. Both guys have only the barest wisps of personality, and the only mildly interesting thing about them is that the light-haired guy is the moody, douchey one and the dark-haired is the kindly, more princely sort. There's a bit of romantic tension between Ageha and the light-haired one, but it's fleeting and ultimately without consequence. That's a good summary of this manga - fleeting, without consequence, and add to that 'kind of annoying.' It's a shame because the relationship between Ageha and Hibari is by far the strongest element here, but it's hard to enjoy it when Ageha keeps making everything about her and her feelings.

ART:

The art is mostly uninspired and a touch out of fashion for the time it was released. The character designs are simple, skinny, and stylized and their eyes are drawn over their hair, and I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that they were drawn closer to 1994 than 2004. It's expressive enough, but it's also kind of flat-looking since Hikada chose not to shade anything and keeps the backgrounds rather vague. There's simply not much to say about the art and not much to recommend it.

RATING:

Honestly, if it weren't for Ageha being so aggravating and having such a complex towards her sister, I doubt I would have remembered anything about V. B. Rose. Much like last season's fashion, this series should be left on the shelf.

This series was published by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 14 volumes available. 12 volumes were published and all are currently out of print.

I've never quite gotten the appeal of bishonen titles. I suspect that it's because I got into manga much later than most people; instead of getting into it as a hormone-crazed teenager, I got into them well into my 20s, and as such it took a bit more than just a gaggle of pretty boys to catch my eye and keep my interest. It certainly doesn't help that most of what qualifies for this genre tends to be a lot of middling bits of pointlessness based on things like visual novels or audio dramas, just like today's selection.

CAFE KICHIJOUJI DE, written by Kyoko Negishi & drawn by Yuki Miyamoto. First published in 2000, and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

Café Kichijouji is a perfectly ordinary café on a perfectly ordinary street, but the employees of the café are anything but ordinary. There's Taro, the boss who's obsessed with cleanliness and smacking down waiter Maki, who is a dumb lout with no mind-to-mouth filter. Alongside him is Shuta, who lives in poverty and lives to eat. There's also Jun, a part-timer whose delicate, feminine looks conceal his enormous strength and potent temper, as well as chef Higumi whose skill for baking is just as strong as his belief in the dark arts. Finally there's Yuichi, the owner whose task it is to keep all these weirdos on task, no matter what sort of wackiness might come their way.

STORY:

As I hinted above, Café Kichijouji de is far from the first manga to exploit the idea of cute boys doing cute things in a cute way. It's not as common as its female counterpart, but it's long past the point where it could be considered a clever subversion of moe tropes. Still, few can be said to be going through the motions quite as badly as this manga does, and equally few can be said to be just as painfully unfunny as this manga.

Every cast member is nothing but a one-note joke. I summed up everything you learn about then in the plot description above, and each single quirk is hammered so thoroughly into the ground that I'm sure they're starting to touch the mantle by volume's end. Every joke is telegraphed from miles away and all of them involve slapstick, shouting, and sometimes a dose of pure (and often supernatural) wackiness. Honestly, I'm surprised that the writer left just enough restraint to avoid playing up the obvious homoeroticism in the premise for a joke or for fanservice. It would have been all too easy to make these goofballs all a little bit gay for one another to appeal to the fujoshi, but all the goings-on here are as innocent as they come.

In some ways, this feels like it should have been a 4-koma manga. It would force the story to find some focus and get to the punchlines a lot faster. It's not like Negishi isn't capable of doing just that, as each chapter is capped off with a bit of superdeformed nonsense that's not quite a 4-koma, but pretty damn close. It's no better than the proper chapters, but it's snappier and have a running gag
with a black cat that keeps interfering with them. It's truly sad that I'm a total sucker for cute kitties, but not even this gag falls completely flat. If you can't manage to pull off a cat joke, something that literally everyone on the internet has done at some point in time, then you truly have no talent for humor.

Café Kichijouji de is a manga that's simultaneously trying too hard and yet not trying hard enough to be funny and cute. It's hoping that the prospect of cute bishies with easy-to-digest personality types will be enough to ensnare an audience and that random or belabored jokes will be enough to get them to stay. If manga could be summed up as colors, then this would be a bland, weathered beige.

ART:

Miyomoto is a competent artist, but her art is just as lacking in personality as the story.
Her character designs are handsome and distinct, but her brand of bishonen isn't anything that you couldn't get from dozens of other manga. The same goes for the cafe - the backgrounds are neatly drawn, but the cafe itself doesn't feel particularly special and she mostly uses it for establishing shots. She is at least trying her hardest to make the most of the comedy, as she draws the slapstick and reactions are all drawn in a lively manner. She also draws very cute chibis for the SD comics, although again they're nothing that you couldn't find elsewhere. Miyamoto tries her best, but her best simply isn't enough to compensate for the story's failings.

RATING:

I almost felt generous enough to give Café Kichijouji de a yellow light, but I can't give a passing rating to a comedy that can't even produce a single laugh. Café Kichijouji de is too boring to be bothered with, even by the most dedicated bishie lover.

This series was published by Digital Manga Publishing. This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available. All 3 were published and all are currently out of print.

If there's a mangaka who never got a even break on the North American market, it's Ai Morinaga. She made some great comedy manga, but not a single one of them were printed in full, and all of them (including today's selection) now have all fallen in sad obscurity.

DUCK PRINCE (Ahiru no Ojisama?), by Ai Morinaga. First published in 2001, and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Reiichi is a hopeless case. He's short, pudgy, and ugly, complete with a bad bowl haircut and Coke bottle-thick glasses. His family mocks him, his classmates ignore him, and the only person willing to give him the time of day is the lovely and gentle Yumiko. She thinks he's adorable, even if that's mostly because Reiichi reminds her of her equally odd, ugly dog Mister. Reiichi gets hit by a car while trying to save Mister, and when he awakes he discovers that he's transformed into a beautiful young man. Of course, he's now a beautiful young man with the personality of a hopeless, insecure nerd. Still, now Reiichi might have a chance at winning Yumiko's heart, even if he has to compete with an a ancient prince disguised as a dog and a teacher with ties to the dog prince's past.

STORY:

Leave it to Ai Morinaga to take something as basic as the ugly duckling story and turn it into a wacky romantic comedy that's more than willing to turn some old tropes on their head.

The big twist here is that the transformation from nerd to bishonen isn't the end of Reiichi's story, but the beginning of it. He's still the same person underneath, and that person is still the same old clueless sap who knows nothing about girls or socializing and everything about gardening and sappy animal dramas. He still has to find within himself a bit of courage and some social graces if he's ever going to get anywhere. Mind you, Yumiko is far from your standard love interest as well. She's not particularly impressed by Reiichi's looks, and since he's using an alias she doesn't connect this new boy to the sweet little nerd she's pining for. She herself is kind of a dork, as she shares most of Reiichi's interests, and she's completely oblivious to the love polygon that's forming around her. Her oblivious is the primary fuel for most of the gags here, as all the men around her compete for her attentions all while trying to keep their true identities under wraps, which soon enough turns everything into one big farce.

Lucky for us, the subplot between these men is just as interesting and fun as Reiichi's attempts at romance. It onto itself is practically a fairy tale, with Mister and the teacher turning out to be caught up in an ages-old battle. It was the teacher, Professor Takamura, who turned a prince into Mister the dog, and in turn it was Mister who turned Reiichi into a bishie. Reiichi now finds himself tasked with helping Mister return to his true form, but he also wants to expose Mister as the dirty dog he is, as he uses his canine form to ogle Yumiko up-close. This subplot keeps things interesting, as it gives them all motivation beyond winning Yumiko and their in-fighting only adds to the comedy. Morinaga balances both of these storylines masterfully, so everything keeps moving forward and neither of them get the opportunity to get boring. Morinaga's also not afraid to let the characters look or act bad but knows just how far to take it, and as such the jokes never descend into cruelty or get too serious.

Duck Prince is a genuinely fun, fast-paced and funny farce. Its characters aren't deep by any means, but she gets a lot of good humor out of their quirks and conflicts and uses them well to tweak a few shoujo conventions, and it's a genuinely good series to read.

ART:

Morinaga's art is suitably broad enough to work for a comedy, but also good looking enough to appeal. Her character designs are solid with lots of dark, shining hair and eyes to go around, and those that are meant to look weird like Reiichi and Mister are these gloriously goofy little chibi things with googly eyes. It's all very fluid and lively with lots of broad expressions and action, and it complements the story beautifully.

PRESENTATION:

Morinaga's omakes are funnier and more remarkable than most. The one she includes here is a great example of her well-timed and slightly immature sense of humor, where a boat trip to Okinawa and an encounter with a beautiful man leads to her learning precisely what happens when you flush a toilet on a moving ship.

RATING:

It's a crying shame that Duck Prince wasn't finished here, because even in its incomplete form it's one of the rare gems of the CPM lineup. It's a hilarious farce with great art and if I had my will I'd rescue this one in a heartbeat.

This series was published by Central Park Media. This series is complete in Japan with 6 volumes available. 3 volumes were published and all are currently out of print.

It's no understatement to say that CLAMP has been highly influential in the world of manga. The only problem is that some people are determined to take that influence a bit more literally than others. Today's review is the result of someone who never got past their own brush with fame to develop any sort of skill or style of their own.

ZYWORD (Gaiodo), by Tamayo Akiyama. First published in 2000, and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

In the world of Zyword, the kingdom of Araimel lies under an icy sleep. The only survivor is Princess Luna, a powerful mage who wants to unfrost her kingdom and save herself from a group of powerful goddesses that want her dead. Her quest takes her all over the realm with her only companion being a mysterious soldier called Ride. Together they are out to save the world and reclaim Luna's lost memories.

STORY:

Zyword feels like someone turned a half-finished concept for a JRPG into a manga. The story focuses on a Chosen One coming to terms with their destiny, where every turn is based on fantasy clichés and every page is loaded with ridiculous names and jargon. It's just too bad that all this build-up and all these ideas go precisely nowhere.

The cast is completely unmemorable. Luna comes closest to making an impression, but the most she can muster is a bit of brattiness, a healthy dose of curiosity, and a lot of stubbornness. Everyone else is merely there to fill their respective token role, be it the stoic warrior, an innocent victim, or a purely wicked villain. As the story goes on, it finds itself simply drowning in its own sea of terminology. Spell names, titles, monsters, goddesses, all of this and more get some jumble of letters to describe them thrown at the reader's head, and Akiyama reinforces this by repeating and defining these terms are frequently as possible. It's especially bad at the beginning, and it happens so often in the first chapter that I wasn't entirely convinced that the audience stand-in character wasn't in fact a human-shaped parrot. Akiyama clearly wants to do a lot of world building here, but she hasn't the slightest clue as to how to pull it off.

Luna may be the Chosen One of this story, but more often than not she's turned into a damsel herself so that her mysterious sidekick can save her. Time and again we're told that she can wield all sorts of incredible magic and has a super-special super-secret destiny that we only learn about in full in the last chapter. Yet every single time she has to face down a villain, she never gets to use her own skills or knowledge to save herself. It's a patronizing move that only gets more so with each instance, and it undercuts Luna's own importance in her own story. It's a real shame because her own backstory is mildly interesting. The story was kicked off when she had a prophetic dream as a child, one that marked her as blessed by the chaos goddesses and ready for a special (and likely deadly) initiation ceremony. Luna rejected this so-called blessing, and in return her kingdom was destroyed. Now she's dealing with a buttload of survivor's guilt and simply wants to make things right. That's a perfectly valid reason for heroics and I wish the story had given itself more time to explore how Luna was affected by these events.

The biggest problem with Zyword is that it was never finished. Akiyama was clearly gearing up for a multi-volume journey. She was building up Luna's backstory, she was widening the scope of Luna's world, she even had just received a token cute mascot creature. Then it all just stops with no attempt to wrap things up. I can't imagine how poorly this series must have done to be cancelled so suddenly, without even enough time to make up a last-minute ending. No matter how badly it likely would have turned out, it would have been better than nothing at all. Maybe if Zyword had gone on longer, it might have found its footing and turned itself into something better. In its present state, though, it's guaranteed to remain a muddled unfinished mess forever.

ART:

I'm pretty sure that Akiyama's connection to CLAMP was pretty much the only reason Tokyopop licensed this in the first place. Akiyama was a member of CLAMP back when they were a 10 person doujin group. She left before they got famous, but she still retained some connections with the present members and she's done her best to make her own art look like theirs. Like a lot of fanart, though, her art is naught but a pale imitation of the original, and worse still she's still trying to imitate CLAMP circa CLAMP School Detectives. Sometimes she outright steals from her former teammates, as Luna's fairy beast bears a suspicious resemblance to Magic Knight Rayearth's Mokona.

There are plenty of lush round eyes, flowing hair, swirling cloth, and goofy fantasy armor, but the faces are stiff, flat, and completely identical to one another. There's no rhyme or reason to the costumes beyond "add more drapery" or "throw on a few more weird-ass horns," and she really shouldn't have tried to add fanservice when she barely knows how to draw boobs. She also has no idea how to draw action. CLAMP's earlier work had some chaotic magic fights as well, but they brought a sense of life and moment to them, as if the swirls of magic could come flying off the page. Akiyama can't manage that, though, and I suspect that she knows as much. That may be why so many of the fights are obscured by dark screentones, speedlines, and sound effects. All that clutter means that there's little space for backgrounds, so Luna and company mostly tend to wander through dingy grey limbo. At least she knows how to compose a page, as the panels bleed into one another in a way that's easy to follow and almost verges upon elegant. It's too bad then that she can't bring that elegance to anything else on the page or within this book.

RATING:

Zyword is not only incredibly derivative, but it's bogged down in boring jargon and bad art and stops before it can go anywhere. Clearly CLAMP didn't lose anything of significance by letting Akimiya go.

This volumes was published by Tokyopop. It is currently out of print.

It seems like that for every good and/or successful shonen series out there, there are half a dozen titles like today's selection - ones that try to appeal to older kids, try to be grittier, but never quite manage to becoming something other than a mild diversion.

BLOODY MONDAY (Buraddi Mandei), written by Ryou Ryumon & drawn by Kouji Megumi. First published in 2007, and first published in North America in 2011.

PLOT:

Takagi Fujimaru is by all appearances an ordinary high school kid. He screws off in class, he helps out with the school newspaper, he even takes care of his sickly younger sister. He also has a secret that's known only to him and his intelligence agent father: Takagi is also the notorious hacker Falcon who uses his skills for the cause of justice. When Takagi's father gets caught up in a Russian bioweapon plot, Takagi must find a way to help his father clear his name and potentially save the world to boot.

STORY:

Bloody Monday is a decent shonen series, doing its best to incorporate a lot of political thriller trappings into a format suitable for teens. If it has any sort of major failing, it's that it feels the need to explain everything to its audience instead of letting them discover things on their own and make their own connections.

I'm not joking about that in the least. There are a ridiculous amount of blatantly expositional conversations that exists only for the benefit of the audience. It's hard to believe that Takagi or anyone else can keep a secret considering how often they blather away about every little thing about themselves or what's going on. It's also kind of a ridiculous story unless you're willing to accept it at face value. You have to be willing to accept everything from the idea of some high school kid becoming a world-class hacker with secret government support to the notion that Ebola and smallpox could be spliced together successfully. It's also not afraid to wallow in some spy story clichés like the Russian femme fatale who serves as the main villain of this volume. She might have been more intimidating if Ryumon wasn't so focused on reminding us of her enormous rack. It's not like that Ryumon isn't capable of that; Ryou Ryumon is just one of many psuedonyms used by Shin Kibayashi, creator of many other shonen mystery series like The Kindachi Case Files and Sherlock Bones. He knows how to create mysteries and thrills that kids can grasp, he just needs to trust in their intelligence a little.

It does at least a sense of the burning spirit that all good shonen needs. Takagi has a strong sense of justice and wants to use his skills for good, and it makes sense for an idealistic teenager to feel this way. He manages to convey that enthusiasm to his friends once he informs them of his secret identity, even if they never rise above their one-note personalities and remain little more than lackeys to Takagi. Just like a hot-headed teenager, though, he's also prone to plunging himself into danger without a thought towards the consequences. He doesn't listen when his father tells him that his current mission is too big and dangerous for Takagi. He doesn't notice that his mysterious new science teacher might not be the best person to confide in when it comes to his hacking. Worse still, his plot and the bioweapons one often feel like they're happening in two different spheres. Even after Takagi starts to suspect his teacher, the two never quite mesh together. Maybe they're just saving that for a later volume, much like the payoff for the plot thread about Takagi's father gathering allies of his own while on the lam. So in spite of some serious flaws and an utterly terrible tag line ("Spy vs. Spy: the 1337 Edition"), it's got enough passion and intrigue to keep me reading. It's just going to have to try a lot harder before it can become something genuinely good.

ART:

Megumi's art is very realistic and more than capably drawn, even if his adult characters are more distinct than his teenaged ones. He's also terribly prone to throwing in pointless fanservice, finding every excuse possible to have the Russian spy walk around in her underwear or flash some panties. He even tends to focus on her chest during serious scenes, and at times I wished someone had taken him aside and said "Her eyes are up there, off panel." It's like he was terribly afraid that we might not get the point that she's meant to be sexy, when really it's just overkill. Still, the realism goes a long way towards selling the reader on the gravity of the story. It's just that sometimes that realism gets stretched when he loses himself in the fanservice or makes it a point for Takagi and his father to go weirdly cat-eyed during dramatic moments. I'm still not sure whether this is just artistic license on his part or whether it's supposed to be a hint to something else entirely. He does certainly try his hardest to bring some visual excitement to the concept of hacking, with plenty of dramatic close-ups and dark, moody lighting. I just wish that he had focused more on the serious elements and less on indulgences.

RATING:

Bloody Monday does have the potential to become a decent political thriller, but if it wants to be great then it needs to stop relying so much on exposition and fanservice and instead focus on tightening its narrative and putting some trust in the reader's ability to put thing together.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics. This series is complete in Japan with 11 volumes available. All 11 have been published and are currently in print. They are also available in e-book form through Barnes & Noble's website.

To wrap things up, let me say something nice about Seven Seas for once by taking a look at the series that put Milk Morinaga on the map as far as American manga fans are concerned.

GIRL FRIENDS (Garu Furenzu), by Milk Morinaga. First published in 2006, and first published in North America in 2012.

PLOT:

Mariko Kumakura is a quiet girl, the sort of girl who spends most her days alone studying. Everything changes on the day that Akiko Ohashi convinces Mariko to get a haircut. Akiko is bubbly and popular, and under her influence Mariko starts to come out of her shell and start making some friends and enjoy herself. Mariko becomes very attached to Akiko and the girls' feelings start to grow into something deeper than mere friendship. Just as they are the verge of confession, Mariko gets a boyfriend and her friendship with Akiko suffers as a result. Will the two of them ever repair their friendship? Will they ever realize that the both of them want to be more than just friends?

STORY:

Yuri is a neglected genre here in the US, and outside of titles like Strawberry Panic, it doesn't tend to get much notice even from manga fans. That's why I was happy to see Girl Friends make such a splash with the fandom, first when it was on the late, lamented JManga site and later one when Seven Seas licensed it. It's a very intimate and character-driven story, and much like the better examples of yaoi out there, it understands that we need to understand who our leads are as characters so that we can be invested in their romance.

Between this title, Kisses, Sighs & Cherry Blossom Pink, and Gakuen Polizi, it's clear that Morinaga goes for a particular sort of type when it comes to her couples. She likes to pair up introverted or bookish brunettes with short hair and extroverts with light, long, loose hair. I don't know if this is because Morinaga is going along with yuri conventions (like this was something akin the uke/seme deal in yaoi) or if this is just her particular fetishes shining through, but it's a pairing that works really well here. Mariko and Akiko complement each other well, as Akiko encourages Mariko to engage with the world while Mariko keeps Akiko focused on important things like schoolwork. It's easy to see why these girls would be fast friends, and the many scenes of Mariko enjoying quality time with the girls is just darling to read.

Of course, this being a yuri, things have to get a bit more complicated, and Morinaga weaves the romantic tension in seamlessly with the main narrative. Mariko becomes more and more possessive about Akiko's attentions, finding herself longing for her praise and touch. Akiko is the more physically aggressive of the two, so she tends to find excuses to touch and flirt with Mariko while still trying to play things cool and casual. At times it becomes frustrating watching these two fumble their way through their problems because we've had so much time to get to know them as people. You want them to be happy, and it's clear that they would be happiest if they would just have some frank conversations with one another and stopped beating around the bush. Even their friends realize that the two need one another, even if Akiko's friends are completely unaware of the romantic complications between them. The falling apart of their friendship ends up neatly paralleling the girls' concerns about being split up as they enter their next year of high school, and it leaves this volume ending on something of a cliffhanger. Like Mariko, you're left wondering if these relationships are reparable or if it's simply the nature of teenage friendship.

Girl Friends is the sort of romance that you can't help but get swept up in. The character are so compelling and real that you can't help but feel what they feel. You root for them, you despair for them, and you want them to be together. If that's not testament to Morinaga's ability to write great characters and great romance, I don't know what would be.

ART:

Morinaga's designs are very cute and round, although they tend to be a bit generic and a bit bobbleheaded. She does well at distinguishing all the different girls in both look and attitude, but they do all tend to have the same doe-eyed blushing face. Fanservice is fairly minimal, a few bared boobs here, a bit of undergarments there, and in a rather meta touch we see a bit of a yuri doujin that can only be described as what happens when you cross Strawberry Panic with a magical girl show. Backgrounds are nicely drawn, but they mostly feature a lot of ordinary streets, schoolrooms, and bedrooms. This is a fairly talkative manga between Akiko's chattiness and Mariko's ever-present inner monologue, but Morinaga takes care to keep this from turning into a talking head montage by letting things widen out once in a while or letting things get a bit abstract. Overall, Morinaga's art is cute but nuanced enough to let the emotion in the story shine through.

PRESENTATION:

There's an extended omake from Morinaga which is surprisingly informative. It confirms not only that Mariko and Akiko's looks stem from her own personal preferences but also her own experience growing up in an all-girls school.

RATING:

You don't have to be a yuri fan to enjoy Girl Friends. All you need to be is someone who can appreciate well-written characters and romance presented with a subtle but emphatic style and a lot of shoujo-cute girls to go around, and that's enough to make this an instant recommendation from me.

This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is complete in Japan with 5 volumes available. All 5 have been published in 2 omnibuses, and both are currently in print.

This month, I'm going to be taking a look at some of the many titles to make it over here from the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump and its many spinoffs. So let's kick things off with one of the best known and fanatically loved of its more recent titles.

DEATH NOTE (Desu Noto), written by Tsugumi Ohba & art by Takeshi Obata. First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

It all started out so harmlessly. The shinigami Ryuk decided to drop a Death Note, the shinigami's method of dealing death, into the human world. He wanted to see who would find it and what they would do if just for a laugh. He gets a lot more than that when a brainy high school senior by the name of Light Yagami picks it up. To Light, the Death Note is a way for him to rid the world of evil and become the world's savior. His methods soon catch the attention of the police, who bring in the highly eccentric and world-renowned detective L to help solve the case. Now Light must continuously find new and creative ways to evade detection if his dream is to succeed.

STORY:

It's safe to say that Death Note has something of a reputation to live up to. It was hugely popular in both its manga and anime forms. Legions of fans grew up around this series and many still believe it to be a masterpiece of shonen, one that explores the complexities of morality like few other series can. Some even defended its protagonist, believing that his attempts to take over the world and mold it in his image is the right and just thing to do. Understandably, its popularity led to something of a backlash, and now enough time has passed that the hype has died down, the fanatics have moved on to other franchises, and we can now determine if Death Note still holds up roughly a decade later.

I'll give Ohba this much credit: his choice of a protagonist is still a fairly subversive one for mainstream shonen. Most Shonen Jump protagonists are simple, earnest, even kind of dumb. They're meant to be easily relatable, easy to understand, and generally good stand-ins and role models for the kids who are the target audience for Shonen Jump. Light Yagami, on the other hand, is most assuredly none of these things. He may be a highly intelligent and successful student, but as he uses the Death Note more and more he reveals his true self to the audience: a cold, calculating sociopath riding high on his delusions of grandeur. So how did Ohba manage to get away with creating a big-time shonen series centered on such a morally detestable protagonist?

While all of those qualities noted above make Light a terrible role model, that doesn't mean that the teenage audience still wouldn't find him relatable. Light's desire to be the smartest person around, to shape the world around him to his liking speak to a lot of common teenage power fantasies, and his actions could be viewed as a form of rebellion against what he views as an unjust world. The story never outright judges Light for his actions - much like Ryuk, it's content simply to stand on the sidelines and let the events unfold. Thus, nothing stands in the way of the reader getting a vicarious thrill each time Light thinks his way out of a problem. He truly is the sort of character you love to hate. You know you shouldn't want him to succeed in his goal, but it's so fascinating to watch him try nonetheless.

It certainly helps that the plot is fascinating in its own right. It's chock full of twists and turns right from the start. One simply can't help but wonder how Light is going to think his way out of whatever situation he finds himself in. Light has an ability to plot that would put Gargoyles' David Xanatos to shame, and in a way it's his shonen-style superpower, much in the same vein as the kamehameha or Gum-Gum powers. Death Note likes to pretend that it's a lot more serious than most shonen series, but it can't entirely fool itself and its audience. As long as you're willing to go along with that and the concept of shinigami, though, you're good to go.

Death Note isn't as deep as some tried to make it out to be, but it is entertaining and Light makes for a compelling antihero. It's a great crime thriller series that loves to dissect its twists and turns as they happen, and it comes of as exciting instead of tedious in spite of the fact that it goes down in what seem like endless monologues. It's not the BEST MANGA EVAR ZOMG, but it's got a that hasn't aged a day, and even a decade later it's a great manga to read.

ART:

Obata is no slouch when it comes to shonen art. Before this series came out, he was known for manga like Ral Omega Grad and especially the then-megahit Hikaru no Go. He's got an artstyle that's relatively unostentatious for shonen with some great character designs and lots of strong, stark inking. While a lot of those qualities are still present in his art for Death Note, he also gave himself the opportunity to stretch his skills and draw something that truly stood out. The characters here are a lot more elaborate and photorealistic than a lot of its contemporaries, and it's a look that helps to sell the gravity of the story. There are no big-eyed, spiky-haired teens here. Instead, Obata draws a world that's barely removed from our own and he fills it full of fine detail, be it the fold of clothing on a body, the books in Light's bedroom, and the range of expressions. The one place he lets himself get fanciful is with the shinigami, and if Ryuk is anything to go by they are gloriously ugly things. He's an instantly iconic creature made up of gangly limbs, dark leather, and all of it topped off with a rictus grin and endlessly staring eyes.

Obata's greatest challenge was the fact that Death Note is a very talkative manga. A lot of manga artists would simply try to shove as many speech bubbles as possible into the panel, transforming the story into a series of talking heads. Obata livens things up by subtly shifting the panel angles up and down or using a well-timed close-up as a character builds to a point. He also makes a point of never showing L's face through purposeful framing and choice of angles, which helps to build up the mystery and mystique around the character. It's not exceptionally clever onto itself, but it's fine touches like this that do a lot to liven up this story visually and make Death Note as a whole as dynamic as it was likely ever going to be.

RATING:

Death Note's reputation is a well-earned one. It's got a memorable lead, a thrilling story, a lot of grandiose ambition, and it's capped off by great and well-detailed art. This story is deserving of its status as a modern-day classic.

This series is published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 12 volumes available. The 12 single volumes are currently out of print, but the 2-in-1 omnibuses are currently in print.

What people sometimes tend to forget is that Shonen Jump showcases just as many romance stories as it does action stories. On the other hand, it's easy to forget that when the manga in question are as dumb and forgettable as today's selection.

STRAWBERRY 100% (Ichigo 100%), by Mizuki Kawashita. First published in 2002 and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Junpei Manaka wandered up to the school roof one day to think, but instead he encounters a lovely girl who accidentally flashes him her strawberry patterned panties. From that moment on, all Junpei can think of is this mysterious strawberry panty girl. His search for her leads him to Tsukada, a pretty and extroverted girl. Her advances leave Junpei flustered, so he seeks out advice from his shy, bookish classmate Aya. As their relationship progresses, Junpei starts to wonder if Tsukada really is the strawberry panty girl he's been seeking, or if she's still out there waiting for him.

STORY:

I didn't have high expectations for this story. After all, it's a story that hinges on a single pair of panties. We are not dealing with a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. What I couldn't have anticipated was just how frustrating Strawberry 100% would be to read because everything rides on Junpei being as annoying and oblivious as humanely possible.

Yeah, it's safe to say that I rather hated Junpei. He's incredibly shallow, even by teenage boy standards. He literally doesn't care about about what this strawberry panty girl may be like as a person or even what she looks like. He just wants to see her panties again. Literally the only value she holds for him is her choice in undergarments. Someone please tell this kid that there's an entire internet full of porn where he could see literally any pair of panties he could ever desire. Like so many shonen romance leads, he's also an incredibly awkward kid who can barely strike up a conversation, yet somehow he convinces Tsukada to go out with him. In all fairness, he manages this only by performing a stupid stunt that makes Tsukada feel so bad for him that she agrees to a date out of pity. He then spends the rest of the book agonizing over every little thing she says and does, completely unsure of how to react or what to say because his mind of full of nothing but thoughts of the strawberry panty girl. Apparently the obvious answer of "just talk to her like a normal human being, you putz" is too much for his simple, panty-addled mind.

This is where Aya enters the picture, and this is where what little patience I might have had for this story snapped. The two of them have the start of what could be a decent friendship, as he has an interest in film and she has an interest in creative writing. Yet he constantly burdens her with his problems and his needs without taking her own into account. True to form, he's also completely oblivious to her very blatant crush on him, but then he's also just as oblivious to the fact that everyone in the story - INCLUDING HIS OWN FREAKING GIRLFRIEND - is clubbing him over the head with the fact that Aya is in fact the strawberry panty girl. Unfortunately, Junpei is as dense as a black hole, mostly because it allows the writer to stretch out the obvious for what I'm sure will be an excessive number of volumes. Meanwhile, poor Aya is ignored solely because she's a Hollywood-style nerd. Time and again, the story tells us that she would be so pretty if she just let down her hair, took off her glasses, and got her nose out of her books. Heaven forbid that she might want to see clearly, keep her hair out of her face, and do something with her time other than pine for an idiot more interested in underwear than anything else.

Shonen romances often tend to be dumb and contrived, but few reach the depths that Strawberry 100% does. The leads are shallow archetypes who internalize everything, guaranteeing that every little problem that they have is stretched out until it becomes completely ridiculous. It's got a lot of regressive ideas about girls and relationships and honestly just about every conflict here could be solved with just five minutes of honest conversation between our three leads. There's no joy or humor to be found here, just annoyance at having wasted your time reading such nonsense.

ART:

You know, would it kill the guys who draw shonen romances to put even a little effort into their art? Just because it isn't a fluffy, frou-frou, flowers-and-bishonen sort of romance doesn't meant that you can't put some effort and skill into it. If only someone would have taught Kawashita that lesson. What's really weird is that he clearly takes a lot of influence from Masakazu Katsura, the creator of I"s and Video Girl Ai. It's especially obvious in the character designs, who all have the squashed bobbleheads with the weirdly tiny faces that Katsura tends to draw. The big difference is that Katsura had a far better eye for detail. Everything from the fashion to the fanservice clearly had a lot of time and effort put into it, and while it's far from classy it's aged very gracefully. Kawashita's work in comparison is far lazier and broad. The characters are given these weirdly wide-spaced eyes that makes them all look alien, and the girls' faces all tend to look the same. Their bodies also look odd, as if their proportions don't properly fit their awkwardly squat bodies. Oddly enough, for a series that centers on a pair of panties, there really isn't a lot of fanservice. Most of what we see comes solely from Junpei's imagination, and even then Kawashita doesn't put much passion or imagination into it. Otherwise he tends to play things very safe and aside from the rather unappealing characters, everything looks very mundane.

RATING:

Strawberry 100% is 100% awful. It's boring, stupid, derivative, ugly to look at, and is anchored to a lead with all the wit and intelligence of a rock. If you need an example of what not to do when writing a shonen romance, look no further than this manga. Better still, don't look at it at all and go read something else.

This series is published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 19 volumes available. 14 volumes were published and all are currently out of print.

Of course, Shonen Jump has been around a lot longer than the 2000s, even if we've not necessarily seen a lot of those titles. We've got a few of the big-name titles from the 1980s, such as Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Fist of the North Star, and today's selection.

CITY HUNTER (Shiti Hanta), by Hojo Tsukasa. First published in 1985, and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

There are many crimes within the confines of Tokyo that go unpunished. There are good people who lose their lives and the police and courts can only do so much. These are the cases that lead people to private detective Ryo Saeba, aka City Hunter. Saeba's got a way with a gun, a quick wit, and a love of the ladies that manages to get out of tight situations time and again. His skills are put to the test, though, when his long-time partner is murdered and he must team up with his sister to avenge his death.

STORY:

It's hard to believe that there are a time when the pages of Shonen Jump weren't filled with a bunch of spiky-haired kids but instead with lots of burly bruisers and grown men. Compared to many of its contemporaries, City Hunter is a rather modest and understated title, as it's essentially a detective procedural that were all over TV in the 70s and 80s. Maybe that's the reason City Hunter holds up pretty well nearly three decades later.

The stories here are fairly episodic, and it's only towards the end of the first volume that we start to see ones that span more than a single chapter. They all tend to follow the same formula, though - Ryo investigates the villain of the week, saves the day, wins over the latest woman to come wandering into his life, and everything goes back to the status quo. As for the stories themselves, they can be all over the place. It covers everything from simple murder to crooked boxers to a horde of zombie-like PCP users, and while some of these stories flirt with the ridiculous, they never cross the line into it, so they remain delightfully pulpy. Ryo himself is rather understated as a character. He's loyal and just, and he's able to think on his feet just as fast as he can shoot. Honestly, the only thing that distinguishes him from literally any other detective character you can think of is his lechery. The stories make a running gag out of him hitting on just about every woman that crosses his path. Some of these instances come off as somewhat creepy today, but for the most part it's harmless.

City Hunter doesn't start to really find its footing until the ending story where Ryo's partner is killed. This allows Tsukasa to introduce the partner's sister, Kaori, as his new sidekick and love interest. She's shown to be competent enough when the chips are down, but it seems the most use Tsukasa has for her is to have her smack down Ryo for being a perv. I'm sure this gag was hammered oh-so-firmly into the ground over the manga's full run, but here it's just a dumb gag that adds a bit of levity during or after the more serious story fodder, much like Kaori herself. When you put all of these elements together, you can see that City Hunter isn't as sensational as a lot of its contemporaries or genre-mates, which does make it a bit forgettable. That doesn't mean that it isn't pulpy good fun in the mean time.

ART:

Tsukasa's art is handsome and grounded. It's a fine fit for the down-to-earth setting, but it does have one mild disadvantage: everyone tends to look the same. It's mostly in the faces; it seems just about everyone who isn't a villain has the same generically good-looking face. What that means is that it's hard to keep track of who is who. Still, it's very expressive and Ryo can usually be distinguished by his confident, nearly permanent smirk. The action scenes are clean, crisply drawn (if not a little stiff) and easy to follow. The backgrounds are beautifully detailed, taking full advantage of both the glamour and the grit of 1980s Tokyo. Even the fanservice is handsome and grounded! There might be quite a few ladies who end up in their underpants at some point or another, they don't get the sort of lurid close-ups and lovingly detailed undergarments that later series would employ, and the raciest anything gets is when we see some deeper than average cleavage. Overall the art here isn't exceptional, but it's still skillful and it still has a very timeless look.

RATING:

City Hunter is a solid package of good art and pulpy fun detective stories that's hurt only by the lack of larger story continuity and some of the leading man's seedier qualities. It's good fun for those who like old-school detective procedurals, but not compelling enough to reach modern day audiences.

This series was published by Raijin Comics. This series is complete in Japan with 35 volumes available. 5 volumes were released and all are currently out of print.

Lucky for me, one of Shonen Jump's most recent hits has an animated adaptation that's just wrapping up at this point. Reviews for it have been rather mixed at best, and having looked at the manga, I'm surprised it managed that much.

SERAPH OF THE END (Owari no Serafu), based on the light novel series by Takay Kagami, with art by Yamato Yamamoto, and storyboards by Daisuke Furuya. First published in 2012, and first published in North America in 2014.

PLOT:

Yuichiro lives in a ruined world. The majority of the world's population was killed off by a combination of a deadly virus and a vampire invasion. The only survivors are children, and most of them have been spirited underground to serve as blood farms. It's this world in which Yuichiro lives, where his only companions are his friend Mika and the other survivors from their orphanage. The two eventually decide to make a break for the surface world, but only Yuichiro manages to make it. Four years later, Yuichiro is itching to join the army of vampire hunters that live on the surface, but they feel that Yuichiro needs to learn the value of cooperation and patience. Before he can do that, though, he'll also need to learn the value of trust and friendship if he's going to survive his trials and strike back at the vampire menace.

STORY:

I'm not an easy woman to scare, but if there's a single phrase in the world of manga that sends a chill down my spine it's "based on a light novel." More often than not it's a kiss of death for the quality of any given manga. More often then not, it guarantees that the story's ambitions will be sky-high, that it explain EVERYTHING to the audience in giant infodumps like they are idiots, and season all that with a few otaku-friendly ideas or archetypes that can easily be turned into shows or merchandise, and their transition into manga is often an awkward one. Seraph of the End is no exception to this rule, which means anyone who choses to read this is in for a rough time.

The biggest problem this story has is also its most inescapable one: the main character. Yuichiro is a pain from beginning to end. He's constantly angry, stubborn to a fault, and too cocky for his own good, and it's these three qualities which serve as the wellspring for all of his problems. From the very beginning, if he was willing to just let others into his life and to learn from them, he wouldn't have lost all his childhood friends and he wouldn't have to half-ass his way through his trials to become a vampire hunter. It certainly doesn't help that Yuichiro is clearly meant to be a knockoff of Attack on Titan's Eren Jaeger, but he's a poor one at that. Eren's anger comes from a more righteous place than Yuichiro's, and as Attack on Titan progresses, we see that Eren's own stubbornness and anger aren't necessarily positive qualities worth rewarding. They make him dangerous at times, and those same qualities sometimes get him into serious trouble. In comparison, Yuichiro is constantly rewarded for being stubborn and charging his way through his battles like he was Leeroy Jenkins reborn. He has no cause to change his ways when being his stupid, stubborn self gets him everything he wants anyways.

The rest of the story is no less derivative, it's just that it's derived more from light novel tropes in general than it is from anything specific. To start with, the majority of the story takes place at a high school. Yes, it might be a post apocalyptic world that's overrun with vampires and ruled under martial law, but the law of anime and manga averages demands that everything be set at a high school. You'd think that under such conditions it would be more like a military academy or training camp, but nope! For all intensive purposes, it's just like every other Japanese high school in every other anime and manga you can think of. OK, there's one big difference: apparently this school has a dungeon that's there solely for the purposes of testing new recruits. Maybe their school used to be the place where some of the kids from the Persona series used to go. There's also the matter of Yuichiro's classmate and superior officer, Mikaela. She's our token girl, but her primary purpose is that of Exposition Giver. At any given point, the story will stop dead in its tracks so that she can explain all the rules and details of their world in a fashion that's only slightly less awkward than starting each conversation with "As you know..." Admittedly, she endeared herself to me a little by snarking on Yuichiro at every opportunity for being both a loner and a virgin, but they weren't enough to save the story for me.

I feel like the writer wasn't so much writing an original story as he was grafting elements from other, more popular series together like the manga equivalent of Frankenstein's monster. There isn't much thought or consistency when it comes to either the plot or the cast, and the end result is both frustrating and awkward to read.

ART:

This might be the first time I've ever seen a separate credit for storyboards on a manga. Normally it's a task that's handled by the artist, and from what I see here I don't see much of a need for him. The only place where Furuya's skills are of any use are during the fight scenes. There he makes skillful use of both perspective and scale to give the fight sequences a sense of energy and flow that the rest of the art desperately needs. As for the art itself, there isn't a great deal to say. The character designs aren't half-bad, especially when it comes to their bold, angular eyes. On the other hand, they all tend to look alike around the face and the male characters look so similar that it can be hard to distinguish them in larger group shots. It also doesn't take much advantage of its setting. The story features both a giant Gothic underground city and a crumbling, overgrown Tokyo, but Yamamoto can barely be bothered to draw it most of the time. After all, why could you draw interesting settings when you can draw another high school?! No, I'm not going to get over that anytime soon. Overall, the art isn't bad, but its good qualities are overshadowed by its more mediocre ones.

RATING:

Seraph of the End wastes whatever potential it might have had by cribbing too hard and too blatantly from others and by making the lead a moron who survives only because of authorial dictate. The show might be able to get by on flashy animation, but this one is just as dull and dead as the vampires they fight.

This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan, with 8 volumes available. 5 volumes have been published, and all are currently in print. This series is also being currently serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha, also available from Viz.

It's a holiday weekend, and like so many people, I don't want to do any hard work. So before I launch into this month's reviews I'm going to do something something special. Before I get too far along, though, I should share what else I've been up to in the last few months. Why, I've done everything from write revews on Black Rose Alice, Yukarism, and The Man of Tango to a review of the El Hazard franchise. I've even done another podcast, this time talking with some of my fellow writers at Infinite Rainy Day about the dreadful series Vividred Operation.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to get a little personal by showing off my own manga for a change. After all, I've been talking about it here for over three years, but what series do I actually read and collect? You'll have to forgive the lighting and the photo quality - cell phone cameras can only do so much, and my manga shelves are in my somewhat dimly lit basement, making photography a tricky prospect.

What you see there is 62 separate series that I've gathered and gleaned in the five years I've been reading manga. I'm rather proud of my collection, as there are more than a few in there that are very hard to get a hold of these days (and some of which had volumes that I paid rather dear prices for). Even if all these books threaten to take over all the shelf space I have available, each and every volume makes me happy to own it.

I'm not just showing them off for the sake of bragging rights, though. Thanks to YouTube anime reviewer Professor Otaku, I discovered Manga Tag, a sort of chain-letter style challenge where video makers and bloggers answer the questions with examples from their own manga collections. So I guess I'll take up his challenge and declare myself It by answering these questions.

1. What was your first manga?

Now the question doesn't specify whether this means the first manga I've ever read or the first manga I ever bought, so I'm including both here. The first manga I ever read was Magic Knight Rayearth. I had only been into anime for a short time when I got my hands on the first season of the series, and I was curious to check out the source material. I got my hands on the first three books from the library and figured I could peruse them throughout the week. I ended up devouring them in a single evening and picked up the second half the next day. From that point I was hooked, and I have CLAMP to blame for that. As for the first manga I ever bought, that would be Fruits Basket. I had seen the show and liked it very much, and knowing that the manga covered so much more of the story, I was eager to check it out. Luckily, I was already halfway through the series when Tokyopop shut down, so I didn't have too much trouble collecting the rest before it got too hard to find.

2. What is your most expensive manga?

8. What is your rarest manga?

I'm skipping ahead a little bit for this one because I can answer both of these with the same series: Challengers, a charming little shonen-ai series by Hinako Takanaga. It was limited from the start, being not only a yaoi series but a yaoi series from the rather short-lived and obscure yaoi publisher DramaQueen, so you'll not find a lot of people who have the full run of this in English. Weirdly enough, Volumes 2 - 4 are not all that hard to find and not all that expensive, but Volume 1 currently ranks as the most expensive volume of manga I own. That book cost me $45, and the only reason I bought it then was that it was the first time I had seen it listed for under $60.

3. What was your least expensive manga?

I tend to be rather thrifty when it comes to old manga and I've managed to get more than a few good deals by buying volumes used. Still, nothing's more free than a gift from others, and I've gotten a few volumes as Christmas presents. If I had to pick a representative from them, though, it would have to be that big, beautiful, hardbound Nausicaa collection Viz put out two years ago. This was a gift from my fiancé's brother, and he had to reorder it almost at the last minute as the first copy he bought was dented, but I'm so very glad he did.

4. What is the most boring manga you own?

This is a tricky question, as nobody honestly collects manga that they would themselves call 'boring'. Still, if I had to determine what manga would be the most mundane, I would probably have to go with Fumi Yoshinaga's What Did You Eat Yesterday? I imagine a lot of younger manga readers would find this one weird, as it's all about adults doing their jobs, dealing with relationship stuff, and making lots and lots of food. That's their loss then, because it's one of my favorites.

5. What is your favorite manga series?

That one is easy to answer - xxxHolic, by CLAMP. I've been a CLAMP fan since the beginning and have read just about every work of theirs that has been put out into English, but few have struck me in the same way that xxxHolic did. Part of it the way it looks; Nekoi has yet to do better work than the sleek, elegant work she's done here. I love it so much that I even hunted down the artbook, which was expensive but totally worth it. Part of it is the somewhat spooky, somewhat mystical atmosphere that the whole series cultivates. Ultimately, though, it was the characters that kept me reading. I love what they did with Watanuki as a character and in particular how they developed his relationships with Doumeki and Himawari, as well as the rather plot crucial one between him and Yuuko. I'm even loving xxxHolic Rei, which is shaping up to finally bring the story full circle. While I wouldn't call it CLAMP's absolute best work - that's what we have Cardcaptor Sakura for - but xxxHolic remains my favorite of theirs and my favorite of all time.

6. What is the most relatable manga series you own?

This is probably the trickiest question of them all to answer. I tend to be drawn to the fantastical when it comes to manga, and as a grown woman there aren't a lot of manga out here that really speak to my own circumstances. There are plenty that are sympathetic, but relatable is not quite so common. That being said, I could settle on a few that seemed to fit best here. Hiroyuki Azuma has always been able to capture everyday life in a way that's equal parts hilarious and endearing, so I had to include both Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba. I also had to include Barakamon. While the circumstances are very, very different, as a country girl myself I could relate to some of the people and ideas that the protagonist encounters in his country village home, and the kids in that series are some of the very few that actually talk and feel like real little kids. Finally, there What Did You Eat Yesterday? again. I'm a pretty avid cook, so that series' focus on recipes and prep reminds me the most of my own everyday struggles to get dinner on the table.

7. What is one manga you own that is based off an anime (not the other way around)?

This one was hard for me to answer simply because I don't own a lot of manga adaptations of TV shows, mostly because the vast majority of them suck on toast. The closest thing I do have is the full run of the Revolutionary Girl Utena manga, and even then that's a bit of a cheat as that was released in Japan just before the show aired. Still, it's meant to be Saito's own interpretation of the show as it was being produced, and while it's nowhere near as brilliant and insightful as the series was, it's still an interesting take on the story.

9. What is the most reprinted manga you own?

That would have to go to Magic Knight Rayearth. It was first serialized in Mixx, then it was collected in flipped volumes under that name, then it was republished unflipped under Tokyopop in both singles and as an omnibus, and now we have the omnibus releases from Dark Horse. That's five, not counting the box sets they put out of the singles from Tokyopop as well.

10. What is the most popular manga you own?

While there might be some competition from Fruits Basket or Cardcaptor Sakura, I feel pretty safe declaring that Fullmetal Alchemist is probably the most popular manga of anything I have on my shelves.

11. What is the most damaged manga you own?

I tend to keep my books in pretty good shape and even when buying used, I try to go for ones in good shape. The only exceptions are my first two volumes of Antique Bakery, which are a bit frayed at the edges and a bit damaged on the spines. Amazingly, the scratch and sniff spot on my Volume 3 still smells fruity after all these years.

12. Which manga has the most amazing art?

Yeah, I think anyone who has been reading this blog for any significant amount of time knew that my answer would have to be Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story. The sheer amount of detail and historical accuracy she puts onto each page blows me away with each volume, and then you add on top of that her skill for subtle movement and expression. She truly is one of the best manga artists working today.

13. What is the oldest published manga that you own?

Again, this doesn't specify whether this means the oldest when it comes to being published in Japan or when it comes to being published in North America. Again, I've decided to cover my bases by answering both. The first goes to Heart of Thomas, which dates all the way back to 1974. The latter was a bit of a surprise, but my volumes of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's Joan was put out by ComicsOne back in 2000. I doubt I'll ever pick up anything much older unless I find some of those other Moto Hagio works that Viz put out in the mid 1990s.

14. What is the newest published manga you own?

I'm actually keeping up with a lot more current releases than I used to even a year or two ago, but the most recent of the lot would probably have to be Maria the Virgin Witch. I enjoyed what little bit of Moyashimon we got back in the day, and while this series is VERY different from that one, it's still fascinating in its own right.

15. What are some of the most recent manga you have purchased?

Luckily, I just so happened to take a trip to the local Barnes & Noble last week to pick up a couple of volumes - the latest collection of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood and the latest volume of Drug and Drop. It's interesting to see how Araki's art evolves and how the histrionic tone of the story works surprisingly well with the era it's set. As for Drug and Drop, I'm glad that CLAMP are not wasting time and getting to the heart of this story at long last as well as crossing it over with a rather unexpected part of the CLAMP multiverse.

Of course, it's not Tag unless you can tag someone else as It. As such, I'm going to throw this one out to anyone else who reads this blog, but I'm also going to specifically tag two people: Ash of Experiments in Manga and Twitter user bunycartoon of the Anime Nostalgia Podcast. If you participate, make sure to let me know by linking it in the comments!

It's another summer season full of sequels on both the big and small screens, so now's as good as time as any to explore the many sequels, prequels, and spin-offs to some of the biggest titles in manga-dom, and one of the biggest in shoujo history was Fushigi Yugi. Now I've already made my thoughts on that series known, but for the longest time I always heard that this prquel series was far superior to the original, a rare feat in any medium. Were they right? Let's find out.

FUSHIGI YUGI: GENBU KAIDEN (The Mysterious Play: The Legend of Genbu Unfolds), by Yuu Watase. First published in 2003, and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

Takako Okuda is a spunky, athletic young lady growing up in 1920s Japan who finds herself in constant conflict with her scholarly father over her mother's waning health. During an argument with her father, Takako opens up her father's latest project, a translation of "The Universe of the Four Gods." In an instant, she is transported to a remote mountaintop in an unfamiliar land. There Takiko saves what she thinks is a young woman chained to a post, but instead turns out to be a wanted criminal who can change sex at will. Takiko now finds herself caught up in the adventure of a lifetime as she must now gather seven warriors to help her fulfill her destiny as the Priestess of Genbu., even if that destiny might mean the end of the world.

STORY:

So let's be blunt: Is Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden better than the manga that inspired it? I can say with absolutely certainty that yes, it most absolutely is. Watase's skills had improved greatly during the decade between the original manga and this series, and it's also clear that she took some of the criticism of the original to heart. The end result of her effort is a far stronger story that's bolstered by a great leading lady and a greater focus on adventure than romantic indulgence.

Takako is as different from Miaka as night is different from day. Takako is smart, athletic and even a little sassy. It's safe to say that this girl does not want for backbone and is far less prone to strolling obliviously into danger. She's also got a surprising amount of anger inside her, as her frustrations with her father have started to fester into a general hatred of men. In all fairness, you can't blame for being frustrated her father can talk of nothing but his transcript until Takako is transported, and while it's clearly his way of dealing with his wife's condition it's also clearly tearing the family apart. Watase has also finally learned how to write male characters that aren't just Tamahome knockoffs. Oh sure, Takako's Celestial Warriors might have a similar gimmick as Miaka's, with their combination of elemental powers and symbolic tattoos, but their personalities don't hew so closely to the usual sort of reverse harem types. Limdo comes the closest to being the Tamahome expy, as he (she?) is blunt and self-serving, but he doesn't take it to such extremes and he comes off as more charming as a result. The only other warrior we've met thus far is Chamka, but as he's both a worrywart and a mama's boy, he's there mostly for comic relief.

The plot structure is admittedly a bit more similar to the original, although if we're being fair a LOT of manga ripped off the whole 'girl gets sucked into magic world, picks up a bunch of bishies, and becomes the Savior of the World' idea. I do think that Genbu Kaiden makes it work better than most. Takako takes on the cause not out of selfish desires, but out of a genuine heroic urge to protect others. She also demonstrates that she's more than capable of doing just that and it feels like Takako is control of the plot instead of the plot being in control of her and her whims. I sincerely hope it continues in this direction, because if so it could be the beginning of something that is truly epic in both a literal and figurative sense.

Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden is a prequel with the sensibility of a sequel. It takes the basics from the story that inspired it and expands and transforms them into something better and (at least so far) more interesting. It's stronger, more capable, and I'm far more interested in seein where this story goes.

ART:

The artwork hasn't advanced quite as far as Watase's storytelling and character-building has. Her characters are a little more literally rounded and substantial than before, but she still has a hard time not turning every guy to Tamahome. Still, at least she's using her bishonen more smartly, as Limdo's androgynous looks make his transformations a bit more believable. She has gotten better at expanding the scale of her stories. She frames her pages with lots of low angles to better capture the size and scale of the world around Takako, and some of the vistas are suitably grand. Sadly, she gets a little lazy when things get a bit closer, as she tends to resort to the old shoujo sparkles and screentones in close-ups. The changes to the art aren't revolutionary by any means, but the art of Genbu Kaiden has benefitted to some degree from the decade of experience that Watase picked up.

RATING:

It doesn't matter if you didn't like or even never read Fushigi Yugi, because Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden works as both a prequel and as a stand-alone series. It takes a lot of the good stuff from the original and improves upon it, and the faults are far less severe and juvenile then that of its predecessor. It's a grand adventure that shoujo readers should check out for themselves.

This series is licensed by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 12 volumes available. All 12 have been published and are currently in print.

I've seen all sorts of manga spinoffs in my day, but today's review has to be beyond a doubt one of the weirdest of them all. It's not a sequel, prequel, or parody of any given series, but the manga adaptation of the anime show that the characters watch within their respective series. It's one of the most meta manga I've come across, but this series proves that sometimes a joke really does need context to make any sort of sense.

KUJIBIKI UNBALANCE (Kujibiki Anbaransu), written by Kio Shimoku & art by Koume Keito. First published in 2006, and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Rikkyoin High School where everything from the student council position to the most mundane things are decided by lotteries. Amongst the incoming class of freshmen is Chihiro a chronically unlucky boy, and his happy-go-lucky friend Tohiko. The two end up getting chosen to fill two positions on the student council along with mad scientist Renko, her perpetual guinea pig Kaoruko, and the shy but powerful Koyuki. Now they have to shadow the current council before they can take over, but what happens when the student council president turns out to be Chihiro and Tohiko's childhood friend?

STORY:

I don't know why this manga exists. It's not that I don't know how this manga came to be -that's easy to explain. First there was the Genshiken manga, in which Shimoku made up a show for the kids in Genshiken kids to obsess over without worrying over copyright (and having a little fun with anime tropes to boot). Then that manga became a TV show, and they decided to turn that fake show into a funny little OVA. Then someone got the bright idea to turn that OVA into a solo manga, and now not only have things come full circle but it has been entirely removed from its original context. Without that context, though, Kujibiki Unbalance loses everything that made it satirical in the first place. Now it's nothing but a pile of dumb anime tropes cranked to 11 that's played completely straight.

The biggest problem with the audience is never explicitly told that this is meant to be a satire of anime tropes. We're meant to all of these one-note characters and their silly quirks and the whole ridiculous lottery idea as something that's totally unironic, if not in a completely serious manner. Every joke is big, broad and dumb, every plot twist comes out of nowhere, and everything is delivered in the loudest, most obnoxious manner possible. It's not even all that concerned with its own plot, as the whole lottery angle gets dropped midway through and it launches into all the usual high school set-ups. It even manages to work in the equivalent of a beach episode, a hot springs episode, and a school festival episode. The rest of the time it's trying to hype up the cheap emotional drama between Chihiro, Tohiko, and Renko the student council president in the hopes of turning it into an equally lame love triangle (or possibly more of a love pyramid, as Chihiro also has an overly possessive and hands-on sister so that the Imouto tickbox can be checked off as well). All of this is over-the-top enough to potentially work as a joke, but there would have to be a lot more commentary to make it work.

This has to be one of the few manga out there that is completely and utterly unnecessary. It's not funny, it's not entertaining, and were it not for a brief comic at the end where a couple of the Genshiken kids comment on the manga, it's completely disconnected from its far better source material. It's just...there, being weird and dull for no reason at all other than as one big in-joke.

ART:

Again, the biggest problem here is that it's hard to tell whether Keito is playing things up as a joke or is being completely serious. The artstyle certainly fits what is meant to be a silly moe romp, as the characters are all round and doll-like . The problem is that they have weirdly flat faces, so when they turn into profile their eyes seem to almost float off their faces. He also plays up the fanservice, as he takes every opportunity possible to show off panties or Tohiko's giant boobs in plenty of low, voyeuristic angles. I will say that Keiko does have a good grasp of perspective and he knows how to fill up a panel with activity and 'jokes' without making it too chaotic. It's certainly quite different from Shimoko's own artstyle, but it's not enough to draw a bunch of moe blobs, ogle their naughty bits, and call it a day.

RATING:

Kujibiki Unbalance should not exist as a manga. It should have just stayed as a silly little in-joke in a far better manga/show, because without it the whole things falls flat.

This series was published by Del-Ray. This series is complete in Japan with 2 volumes available. Both volumes were published and are currently out of print.

Comedy spin-offs of popular franchises are a dime-a-dozen in Japan but we very rarely get them Stateside. If this book is any indication, though, there's more than a few good reasons why we don't see them published very often.

FULL METAL PANIC! OVERLOAD (Ikkinari! Furumetaru Panikku!), based on the light novel series by Shouji Garou with story and art by Tomohiro Nagai and character designs by Shikidouji. First published in 2001 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

Kaname Chidori and Sosuke Sagara are back, and this time there are no serious plot elements to hamper them! Yep, here you'll get nothing but wacky hijinks inside and outside of the classroom as Sosuke's military instincts turn even the most ordinary situation into an explosive one, leaving Kaname to try and keep the peace.

STORY:

So, you do remember all the silly comedy bits from the original Full Metal Panic!? Well, imagine if someone stretched those moments to fill out an entire manga volume and then halved the quality. If you can picture that in your mind, then you have some notion of what reading Full Metal Panic! Overload is like. There's really no point in describing the cast because it's composed almost entirely of Kaname and Sosuke, and if you have any familiarity with the franchise then you know precisely what you're going to get. Kaname acts like a classic tsundere, Sosuke is deadpan and oblivious, repeat ad naseaum. Hell, you don't even really need to be all that familiar with the Full Metal Panic! canon as the characters and set-up are briefly summed up in the beginning. The chapters themselves are fairly formulaic, and everything seems to end with Sosuke breaking out a gun, a grenade, or even a landmine all in the name of protecting Kaname. He's so dedicated to his cause that not even a brief bout of amnesia can't stop him from his duties.

The only thing that breaks up the monotony are the occasional bits of fourth-wall humor. The characters might mess with the captions labeling them or comment on how all this ridiculousness is 'like being in a manga or a light novel!' Sadly, these moments are the only times that the jokes come anywhere near inspired. The reason that the comedy bits in the original series work so well is that they come before or in between extended bouts of serious business. The lightheartedness lets the reader come down a little from the main storyline before diving back into the next big plot turn, and most adaptations know how to get the most from the simple set-up. This manga, on the other hand, does not. It just cranks the comedy to 11 and never stops going, and the end result feels both watered-down and tedious.

ART:

It took me at least two tries to actually get through this manga because of the character designs. I don't know who this Shikidouji guy is, but I'm pretty sure no one really needed his particular take on this cast. They're not quite normal and they're not quite super-deformed, but they're bizarre and over the top and not appealing in the least. Plus now there's a lot of awkward panty shots to go with it all! I don't know why this series demanded a separate character designer, but neither he nor Nagai add all that much visually. It's all just a bunch of heavily stylized nonsense presented as plainly as possible.

RATING:

Not even Full Metal Panic! fans would get that much out of this version. All it does is rehash old jokes in an ugly, goony artstyle. In a world where we have Full Metal Panic! Fummofu, this manga is absolutely unnecessary.

This series was licensed by ADV. This series is complete in Japan with 5 volumes available. All 5 were published and all are currently out of print.

Merry Month of Manga Review: KIZUNA: BONDS OF LOVE

Merry Month of Manga Review: APOTHECARIUS ARGENTUM

Merry Month of Manga Review: READ OR DIE (R.O.D.)

Merry Month of Manga Review: NO. 6

Merry Month of Manga Review: TRANSLUCENT

Merry Month of Manga Review: CROWN

Merry Month of Manga Review: V. B. ROSE

Merry Month of Manga Review: CAFE KICHIJOUJI DE

Merry Month of Manga Review: DUCK PRINCE

Merry Month of Manga Review: ZYWORD

Merry Month of Manga: BLOODY MONDAY

Merry Month of Manga Finale: GIRL FRIENDS

Review: DEATH NOTE

Review: STRAWBERRY 100%

Review: CITY HUNTER

Review: SERAPH OF THE END

A Tour of the Shelves & Manga Tag with Megan

Review: FUSHIGI YUGI: GENBU KAIDEN

Review: KUJIBIKI UNBALANCE

Review: FULL METAL PANIC! OVERLOAD