The Manga Test Drive

This fall, we're going to kick off a two-part theme. This month will be all about angelic titles, and I can't think of a better place to start than with the most notorious shoujo series about angels around.

ANGEL SANCTUARY (Tenshi Kinryoku), by Kaoru Yuki. First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

It would be an understatement to say that Setsuna is a messed-up kid. Not only is he constantly fighting with his classmates, he harbors a deep and shameful love for his younger sister, and now he's caught up in a literal holy war between heaven and hell. Setsuna is the reincarnation of a powerful angel and both sides want his power for themselves and both are willing to hurt others in Setsuna's life to get their way.

STORY:

There was one question constantly running through my mind as I read Angel Sanctuary: what the hell is going on? I was able to grasp the basics, but the story gets so lost up its own ass about angels, demons, and reincarnation that it quickly goes off the rails.

The human element is the least complicated part of the story, although it's equally as histrionic as everything else. Setsuna is a churning sea of emotions, between his own sense of alienation, his desire for his sister, his shame in those feelings, and his determination to protect said sister at all costs, even if it means enduring abuse from his mother because of his incestuous desires. It's simply too much drama for any protagonist to bear and as such he comes off as a ridiculous creature. The crazy thing is that the rest of the cast is no less over-the-top than him.

For example, there are a couple of angels stalking Setsuna who serve alternately as comic relief and as bearers of exposition. Seriously, I do not envy the translator who likely had to dig deep into angelic lore to translate some of their conversations. Then there's Rosiel, a ruthless rival angel who manipulates one of the sister's friends through a possessed CD-ROM game to get close to him. That would be frightening were it not so patently melodramatic and convoluted, but that's just par for the course as far as this series is concerned. Maybe I could roll with it if I found the holy war parts more intriguing or found Setsuna more relatable, but they're both simply too much for me to take seriously.

ART:

At least Yuki's art is pretty and positively dense with detail. She lends the character designs a lot of flourish and shading. The only real downside is that she tends to give them all the sort of limp, overly tousled hairstyles that remind me of later artists like Matsuri Hino, although Yuki's take on it doesn't come off as nearly so sentient in its messiness. The backgrounds are lovingly traced and she keeps the screentone usage to a minimum. Alas, the same cannot be said for her use of speedlines for dramatic effect. The denseness of the art is only emphasized by the fact that the panels tend to be small and packed tightly onto the page.

PRESENTATION:

There's only a few author's notes and sketches after the story, although compared to a lot of older Shoujo Beat titles that's a positively lavish amount of extras.

RATING:

Angel Sanctuary has intense art, but its story gets so convoluted and melodramatic that it's hard to take it all in. The sad thing is this is probably the best and most ambitious Kaoru Yuki ever got. Sadly it's all downhill from here.

This series is published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 20 volumes available. All 20 volumes have been released. The physical volumes are currently out of print, but are available digitally.

This one may not be as literally angelic as the last one, but it's certainly a lot more interesting to talk about.

CHEEKY ANGEL (Tenshi na Konamaiki), by Hiroyuki Nishimori. First published in 1999 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Megumi is a brash young boy who simply wants to do martial arts and to grow up into the manliest man ever. A chance encounter with a wizard leads to Megumi getting a magic book, which in turn misinterprets his wish and turns him into a girl. By the time he reaches high school, Megumi has become renowned just as much for his beauty as for his fighting prowess, and class thug Soga becomes her number one fan. Megumi is conflicted; he still sees himself as a heterosexual man at heart, so the last thing she would want to do is fall for a man...right?

STORY:

Shonen romances are tricky to pull off well. A lot of them are little more than middling fanservice fests or celebrations of super-manly super-dudes who beat up all the bad guys while pining for some milquetoast beauty he can never seem to talk to. Cheeky Angel doesn't take either path but instead forges its own. It takes the time to build up its cast, has some fun with the concept of gender, and is all the better for that effort.

I really, really liked Megumi. He's personable, strong but with an equally strong sense of loyalty and nobility. While the reason for her genderswap is frankly ridiculous, it also makes him (and thus the reader) hyper-aware of the ways boys and girls present themselves to the world and to others. She's equally as frustrated by how boys get creepy, pushy, and weird around her as she is at the notion that she should be meek and mild simply because she's a girl. This is not helped by her best friend Miki, the only person who still remember's Megumi's past as a boy. Miki thinks she's helping Megumi through her constant advice and pressure to conform, but mostly it just spurs Megumi to rebel harder and makes Miki come off as the biggest killjoy possible.

In true shonen romance fashion, Megumi's main love interest is a bleached-hair yankii with a face only a mother could love. Yes, there's another, nerdier guy who only wants to prove his manliness to him, but he doesn't get nearly the screentime that Soga does. Still, Nishimori undercuts Soga's swagger with a hearty dose of silliness and the occasional moment of vulnerability, which goes a long way towards humanizing him. The same is equally yet oppositely true of Ichiroh, the nerdy one. He's usually played as a fool, but he does get a few moments of glory and decency. This approach not only lends the two depth, but helps them to feel like emotional equals to Megumi. Both are perfectly decent guys with their own hang-ups, so Megumi's choice isn't completely telegraphed.

The only thing that feels off is the impetus for the story itself: the magic. The story just completely glosses over the notion that wizards, genii, and magic are real and functional within this universe (even if it can be occasionally hard of hearing). The flashback to Megumi's past is over with so fast that it's almost possible to forget about it entirely until Megumi starts talking about himself as a boy. It's also incredibly fast-paced, as plot threads that most series would drag out for volumes at a time are seemingly resolved in a matter of a few chapters. Nonetheless, this is easily one of the most entertaining shonen romances I've read in a long time.

ART:

Since Nishimori isn't one of those shonen mangaka who is focused on fanservice, his art is nothing all that remarkable. The character designs are fairly simple but still manage to be appealing. Soga is drawn very much in the vein of characters like Eikichi Onizuka, a mean face that melts into super-deformity whenever he starts getting lovey-dovey over Megumi. The action isn't anything special either, which is surprising considering how frequently the cast is picking fights. Honestly, the only thing that Nishimori seems to really be into drawing is Megumi's hair. It always seems to be swishing around him in long, graceful wisps and it's the one touch of elegance in an otherwise workman-like book.

RATING:

Cheeky Angel is a refreshing twist on a typically shallow subgenre with an (mostly) endearing cast and an approach to the battle of the sexes that's more thoughtful than you usually see in shonen. This is a series that even I could fall in love with.

This series is published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 20 volumes available. All 20 were published. The physical volumes are out of print, but the series is available digitally.

Finding BL manga about angels is not a particularly hard feat to accomplish. Now finding a GOOD BL manga about angels? That's the tricky thing.

FALLEN MOON (Daten no Tsuki), by Toui Hasumi. First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

In this collection of stories, a man cast out of his personal Eden finds himself trapped in the lavish household of a fallen angel, where he is held captive just as much by his captor's will as he is by the walls. In another world, an artist and his patron turn out to have a far longer and far more divine history than at first glance. Finally, a bounty hunter and his partner face off against demons, only to undergo transformations and revelations of their own.

STORY:

Unlike most BL anthologies, there actually is a theme to tie all of these stories together. All of these stories feature angels and devils in some form and while it's not completely clear, it is implied that these stories take place within the same timeline. That is where my praise for Fallen Moon ends.

This theme is admirable in theory, but in practice it just leads to uncertainty about whether this is one continuous universe, especially since some names and faces keep reappearing in different places. It also doesn't help that in addition to recycling those, she also keeps recycling the same sort of dynamic between her couples. They always seem to revolve around naive young men with tragic pasts and lost loves who find themselves manipulated and captivated by cruel men. It's all very suggestive and more than a little problematic, but not one of these stories ends with any sort of resolution.

It's true! There's no sex, no declaration of love, and in most cases not even so much as a kiss. They simply just end, leaving the reader with the narrative equivalent of blue balls. Maybe I could have lived with that had the stories or the setting been compelling in their own right, but they are half-assed at best and barely sketched at worst. What little explanation for anything tends to come from the mouths of random serving girls, and thanks to the aforementioned lack of resolution all that exposition doesn't add up to much. This isn't so much a short story collection as it is a pile of half-finished story ideas that somehow made it to print.

ART:

Hasumi's characters tend to come in two flavors: long-haired, perpetually pissy dude and long-haired wide-eyed innocent ladies. They all tend to have the same face, and if it belongs to a guy it's permanently stuck in an expression of pure constipation. Not suprisingly, the lack of emotion undercuts a lot of whatever emotion or allure the story could offer. Maybe she thought she could get away with it by hiding it under everyone's snake-like hair, always at the ready to drape itself across their prone frames or swirl dramatically about them. Otherwise, her art is about as workman-like as you can find in BL.

RATING:

Fallen Moon suffers from bland art and boring, half-finished storytelling. There are countless other BL stories about angels and demons, and you'd be better off reading them instead of this.

This book was published by Tokyopop under their Blu imprint. It is currently out of print.

To wrap things up, let's look at a forgotten magical girlfriend series from an equally forgotten publisher (...and a later one that I wish we could forget).

GUARDIAN ANGEL GETTEN (Mamotte Shugogetten), by Sakurano Minene. First published in 1997 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

Tasuke Shichiri is just another lonely, dorky high school boy with an absent family, few friends, and no girl to call his own. This all changes when he gets a strange Chinese artifact from his father, from which emerges the moon spirit Shao Lin. She declares that she will protect him from all harm, but can Tasuke protect her from the modern world and himself from his own growing feelings for her?

STORY:

Did you ever want a severely watered-down, defanged version of Oh! My Goddess with a vague veneer of Chinese flair? Any sensible manga reader would say "No! Of course not!" After all, why settle for a knockoff when the original is far superior and readily available? I don't know, but somebody must have have been willing to do so because we ended up with Guardian Angel Getten (twice!).

Like any decent magical girlfriend series, this series would need a strong central romance to anchor the story and give the readers something to root for. This is completely absent with Guardian Angel Getten. Both Tasuke and Shao Lin are utterly devoid of personality beyond a general sense of niceness and a whole lot of naivite on Shao Lin's part. I could barely care about either of them, much less seeing these two get together. While a few others pop up from time to briefly and ineffectually serve as rivals to one or both of them, they are no more complex nor interesting than our lead couple and thus add nothing to their nothing romance. The final blow is that Minene clearly ran out of ideas within a couple of chapters. He ends up falling back on some of the usual fish-out-of-water ideas (they go shopping! Shenanigans ensue!) or the usual anime and manga cliches (they go to the beach! Shenanigans ensue!) Not even Shao Lin's Chinese origin adds anything to the story other than a handful of exotic-sounding names. It's just an empty series of events aping some popular or well-worn ideas simply because there was money to be made.

ART:

Minene's artwork is cute, but much like the story there isn't much to it below the surface. Virtually everything here is a cheap copy of either something specific or just a general late '90s anime aesthetic. The cast is blandly pretty at best, but it lacks any sort of charm or personal style. Nowhere is this more obvious than with Shao Lin. She's a pretty blatant Belldandy knockoff; Shao Lin's long hair, her exotic costume, even some of her speech patterns are meant to evoke her. Yet she comes off like a copy because Minene takes too much from the original without adding in some semblance of charm or detail beyond her Chinese background. This lack of personality goes beyond the character designs, though. The paneling, the backgrounds, the comic takes - all of it is perfectly functional but none of it is terribly memorable or elegant.

RATING:

It's kind of baffling that Guardian Angel Getten got a second chance here when nothing about is good or interesting beyond its vague echoes of another, far superior series. It's hard to imagine recommending this when it was new, and it is absolutely not worth seeking out now.

This series was published by Tokyopop, and previously by Raijin Comics. This series is complete in Japan with 11 volumes available. 4 volumes were released by Raijin Comics; 5 2-in-1 omnibuses were released by Tokyopop. All are currently out of print.

Last month was on the side of the angels; this month it's all about the devils, demons, and other nefarious forces. Today's review is far from nefarious, though, despite what its title may suggest.

LUCIFER AND THE BISCUIT HAMMER (Hoshi no Samidare), by Satoshi Mizukami. First published in 2005 and first published in North America in 2014.

PLOT:

Yuuki is an ordinary guy with an ordinary life and because of that he can't seem to muster up any sort of strong emotion about anything. He spends his days drifting through life alone...at least, until he meets the talking lizard Noi. He tells Yuuki that he is a magic knight who must save Earth from destruction by a giant magical hammer. Yuuki takes this about as seriously as you might expect, but he finds himself convinced when he meets Samidare. She's a friendly girl with super strength and a desire to win so that she can destroy the world herself. It's a bizarre motivation to say the least, but it's just the thing to convince Yuuki to join her cause.

STORY:

Even by the standards of shonen manga, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer is strange. Hell, even the English title is strange. It's the sort of strange manga that feels like it's teetering constantly between a few different genres at any given time, and the strangest thing of all is everything that makes it strange are also its most charming and daring qualities.

In lesser hands, I fear that Yuuki might have come off as a bore or a pill, but Mizukami gives him a blunt, dry wit that makes him rather funny. There is a darker edge to him, though. Yuuki is not a loner by choice but by habit, thanks to years of childhood abuse that pushed him away from everyone but the grandfather who abused him. Someone like him seems like an odd match for the perky, quirky Samidare but her own open, confiding nature and her megalomaniacal plans are just enough to get past Yuuki's emotional boundaries and push him out of his rut of a life.

As for Samidare herself, it would easy to dismiss her as just another Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but she too has a darker past and it's hard to not be charmed by her determination to make the most of her time and make an impression on the world (even as she destroys it). This combination makes her just as endearing to the reader as she is to Yuuki. Rounding out this is Noi, who mostly serves as Yuuki's mentor (and bearer of exposition) when he's not bickering with the boy.

When I say that this series tends to jump genres, what I mean is that it somehow manages to be a character-driven slice-of-life series and a shonen battle manga at the same time. It doesn't make a hard shift between the two, but instead flows freely from one to the other like streams in a delta. It's a combination that sounds bizarre on the page, but in practice works because each approach compensates for the flaws of the other. Yes, there's talk of the Power of Friendship and not letting your past hold you back, but it doesn't feel like so many tired platitudes here because Mizukami puts effort into building up the cast and the friendships they may be fighting for. The darkness is countered with a degree of sincerity that makes their personal and literal victories feel all the more well-earned. Thanks to those character-building, slice-of-life-esque portions, the battles never feel repetitious and the time feels well-spent on a personal and narrative later. Honestly, this is a narrative combination that MORE mangaka should be using!

ART:

On the surface, Mizukami's art doesn't seem all that remarkable. The character designs are a little blocky and snub-nosed, maybe a little wonky around the faces but otherwise pleasing to the eye. They inhabit a world that is mostly mundane (save for the spectral animal companions and the giant hammer hanging over the horizon like a second moon). Even the golems our cast ends up fighting aren't all that fanciful in design. That doesn't matter, though, as what it does have is energy and emotion to spare.

There is a lot of fighting and jumping around - this is a shonen series, after all - and Mizukami lends each punch and kick with a sense of actual, physical force. This in turn lends each fight the sort of impact (literal and otherwise) that they need to be exciting. Yet he also handles the quieter, more emotional moments just as deftly as the battles. His faces may be crude, but he gets a lot of emotion and nuance out of them. There are some wild takes, but he uses them sparingly and wisely to keep things from getting too cartoony. Overall, he brings to it a great sense of timing and a certain subtle touch that helps Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer to overcome what artistic limitations it might possess.

RATING:

Seven Seas did a great thing when they saved this series from the wreckage of JManga. Clearly that cult audience it had built up over the years knew something that the rest of us didn't. Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer is weird enough to catch the eye, but its great character writing and skillful yet simple art to keep people reading. It's an absolute gem that more people should be reading.

This series is licensed by Seven Seas. This series is complete in Japan with 10 volumes available. All 10 have been published in 2-in-1 omnibuses and all are currently in print. This series is also available digitally through Crunchyroll.

Alas, a lot of devil-themed dramas are no better than the ones about angels, at least if this series is any indication.

THE DEMON ORORON (Akuma no Ororon), by Hakase Mizuki. First published in 1998 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Chiaki has led a lonely life. Her parents disappeared long ago and most people ostracize her for her ability to see spirits, so she's mostly lived on her own. One day she stumbles across a strange blond man on the street and takes him in. She couldn't have possibly guessed that she is part angel, or that her powers have made her a target to the forces of heaven and hell. Luckily for her, the stranger she found is Ororon, the king of demons, and he swears to protect her from all those that would threaten her.

STORY:

The Demon Ororon feels like what would happen if someone threw xxxHolic and Angel Sanctuary into a blender with a bunch of empty fluff and drama. The concept is too familiar and too haphazardly constructed to thrill anyone but the most inexperienced manga readers.

The biggest problem is that neither Chiaki nor Ororon do enough to capture the reader's attention and imagination. Despite the fact that she possesses literally cosmic powers, Chiaki is too much of a plain Jane to distinguish herself as a heroine. Not even her lonely backstory can help her, as that's resolved before the first chapter ends. As the plot goes on, she becomes less involved in the plot proper. Instead, she's used as a damsel for Ororon to save and lectures him afterwards for killing his opponents.

Ororon is meant to be seductive, cool, and secretly tormented, but all of these qualities are downplayed too much to impress the reader. I couldn't have cared less about his crazy mom or the power struggle around his title, and it's clearl right from the start that his coolness is nothing but a facade. Even his declarations of love and devotion to Chiaki ring hollow because he says it so often as to cast doubt on the sincerity of his sentiment. Not suprisingly, the rest of the cast is no better handled than our leading couple. They are nothing but anonymous angels and devils who look like fashion models and end up getting splattered across the scenery. The only exception to this is Ororon's brother, but that's only because he speaks in a fancy font that's nigh unreadable.

It's a shame that the character writing sucks so much because the story at large does manage to gracefully transition from a monster-of-the-week story to something more ambitious after it gets through Ororon's backstory. It does feel like the narrative stakes are increasing, but it's impossible to keep a lot of the characters straight or care about their issues.

ART:

Mizuki's art is striking to say the least, although it's up to personal opinion whether that's in a good way or a bad way. Her character designs are highly stylized, much closer to a fashion sketch than anything you might find on the manga shelves. Personally, I found their strange, pinched faces, tiny heads, and jutting angular bodies to be hideous. Worse still, many of them (including Chiaki) are so similiarly androgynous that it's hard to tell who is who.

You get the feeling that Mizuki was also not comfortable drawing the fight scenes. She tends to skip right past the actual acts of violence, which leaves the reader feeling jarred when the opponent is standing in one panel and smeared across the panel in dark splotches in the next. That's probably for the best, though, as what few fight scenes she does draw are stiff and her composition is positively jumbled. At times only the inner monologues indicate which panels follow one another. She also doesn't have much use for backgrounds, choosing instead to go with stark black and white washes. It's all very distinct, but it's not very good.

PRESENTATION:

Tokyopop didn't help things by getting too fancy with the fonts. They used four different fonts for four different characters and even Chiaki's inner monologue gets its own special font. As each new one appears, they get more and more stylized and thus harder and harder to read. It helps to distinguish characters, but I do wish they had thought more about what's easy to read and not what looked cool on the page. Also, while there are a few typos I was bothered a lot more by the constant use of 'bogy' to refer to minor demons and similar beings. What the hell is a bogy? It is like a boogeyman?

RATING:

The Demon Ororon is a stylish, derivative mess. There's nothing here story-wise that you can't get from countless other manga titles and the artwork is hit or miss at best. Throw this one back into the purgatory along with most of Tokyopop's library.

This series was published by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes. All 4 were published in single volumes and a 4-in-1 omnibus, and all are currently out of print.

Just as there are many BL books about angels, there are just as many about devils, including this one from one of the genre's best loved creators.

THE DEVIL'S SECRET (Akuma no Himitsu), by Hinako Takanaga. First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Father Mauro is a priest in a small, rural village. One day while out on a walk he finds a strange, badly beaten young man in the bushes named Raoul. Raoul can't remember a thing, much less why he was injured in the first place or why he has horns on his head. He swears he can't be a devil, yet the more he molests Mauro the better he feels. When the truth is revealed, Mauro has to decide how much he values Raoul over his faith.

STORY:

Despite what the blurbs might suggest, this is actually another BL anthology. While the title story is probably the most well-developed of the lot, none of them last more than a couple of chapters. While the stories might be short, she does manage to make the most of that space and build up these relationships moderately well.

The title story takes up the most space, as it covers the full arc of Mauro and Raoul's relationship as well as a couple of side stories featuring Raoul's interfering half-brother. Between this, Challengers, and The Tyrant Falls In Love, I'm getting the idea that Takanaga really loves the idea of an overprotective older brother type caught up in gay relationship of his own. For a story about a priest and an incubus, Mauro and Raoul's relationship is surprisingly sweet and largely consensual. That being said, I feel like Takanaga missed some narrative opportunities with Mauro.

In-story, his reason for pushing Raoul away isn't the fact that he's a Catholic priest sworn to celibacy or a member of a church largely opposed to homosexuality, but merely the fact that Raoul is a demon and priests are meant to fight against demons. Even if this was always meant to be a short story, this choice makes Mauro's conflict feel too simplistic and doesn't give him enough reasonable cause to tear himself away. After all, Raoul is grateful for Mauro's care and attention and sees the sex he offers as a way of displaying his affection and making his caretaker feel good. Their relationship is positively cozy, a word seldom used with BL. So why not let real life help support your Second Act Break-up and give Mauro a little more depth?

The other chapters focus on a straight-laced first-year teacher who finds himself frustrated by an easygoing and flirtatious student who simply likes what he sees and lives to gently tease. There's something oddly endearing about the dynamic between these two, something which helps to overcome the potentially distasteful age and power difference between the two. That being said, the inevitable sex at the end feels too sudden. It's as if the moment the teacher conceded any sort of tolerance for the student, Takanaga declared TIME FOR BUTTSEX lest the reader get bored. There wasn't a lot of build-up to Mauro and Raoul's coupling either, but some of that could be hand-waved away with the fact that one of them is a sex demon. That is not the case here. The final story is the dullest and least fleshed out of the lot. Two high school boys dance around one another's feelings for years, only to reconnect as college students thanks to a lost cell phone. If it had a little more time and page space, maybe it could have been more distinct and endearing. As is, it's just filler.

The stories that make up The Devil's Secret are unusually even in quality for a BL anthology. They're all pretty sweet and well intentioned, even if the sex feels kind of superfluous. At worst, they come off as a bit dull and toothless, but I'll take sweet dullness over the usual sort of mediocre BL nonsense.

ART:

Takanaga's art is a cut above what you normally see in BL. Her characters do tend to be a bit gangly but she's got a better grasp of anatomy than most BL artists. She also gets a fair bit of intentional humor from their expressions. Her smut is nothing special, save for her occasional use of speed lines for accent. The backgrounds are rather mundane, but she draws them frequently and saves the screentones for the most emotional moments, using them as accent rather than as emotional telegraph.

RATING:

The Devil's Secret isn't quite good enough to make a convert of BL skeptics through sheer quality, but fujoshi who prefer sweetness to smut will find a lot to like here.

This book was published by Digital Manga Publishing. It is currently out of print.

Let's close things off with an devilishly charming little series that's been mostly lost to the ages.

STRAY LITTLE DEVIL (Sutorei Ritoru Debiru), by Kotaru Mori. First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

Pam Akumachi was always told by her grandmothers that nice devils were real. They even taught her a spell to summon them. When Pam finally tries to use it, though, she ends up getting sucked into another world full of devils and angels. She discovers that she has been transformed into a devil and gets attacked by an angel that looks just like her best friend. Now the only way for Pam to get back to her world is to become a full-fledged devil and that means starting from the beginning. She has to learn to read their language, work her way through the demonic ranks, and find a familiar, even if she has to shake up a few rules to do so.

STORY:

If you just go by the cover, you might expect Stray Little Devil to be nothing but fanservice and nonsense. What I got was not great by any measure, but it turned out to be a decent and relatively innocent hero's quest.

Nobody, not even Pam, is all that deep as far as characters go. There are tricky mentor types, aloof villains, wacky sidekicks, a tsundere girl who will inevitably warm up to our innocent lead, all of them as stock as stock characters can be. The big joke is the contrast between Pam's gentle nature and her demon nature, even if in truth it's closer to being a quarter of a way to a joke. Still, her childlike personality is fairly endearing, even if you want to smack her sometimes over how oblivious she is about her opponent Lufia.

I was also surprised as to how many tropes this takes from the whole 'girl gets sucked into another world' concept, something which would have been positively old-fashioned in 2004. It also borrows a bit from magical girl stories since it relies a lot on cute tranformable familiars and an emphasis on the power of female friendship. The downside to both of these things is that it makes the story fairly easy to predict. You know the bitchy girl will end up becoming Pam's closest ally. You know that Pam's hardheaded insistence on saving others will win over Lufia over time. Despite all that, I don't mind because it takes those well-worn tropes and makes them work well.

ART:

Mori's art is cute and cartoon-like, a sort of missing link between the chibis of the 90s and the moe artstyle that came to define the 2000s. It's also short on fanservice, despite some questionable style choices on the part of the cast. The panels are denser than you expect thanks to Mori's heavy use of big, swirly speedlines and over-the-top reactions. I do wish they had spared some of the imagination they put into the characters for the world around them, as the backgrounds are little more than a bunch of floating islands and dark, jagged interiors. The art is nothing extraordinary in the larger frame of things, but it's cute and light enough to work with the story's tone.

RATING:

Stray Little Devil is no trick, but instead a charmingly simple little treat of a manga. Maybe if it had gone to a larger publisher, it might have found an audience to appreciate its charms.

This series was published by Dr. Master/ComicsOne. This series is complete in Japan with 5 volumes available. All 5 were published and are currently out of print.

For the second year in a row, we'll be looking at the wild world of Gundam manga! To start things off, let's look at one of the most recent additions to the franchise.

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM THUNDERBOLT (Kido Senshi Gundamu Sandaboruto), written by Yasuo Ohtagaki & based on the series by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino . First published in 2012 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

As the One Year War reaches it peak, two sides face off against one another in the wreckage of the Side 4 colony, now know as the Thunderbolt sector. One side is the Moore Brotherhood, a faction of the Earth Federation staffed by former residents of the colony and led by the daring pilot Io Fleming. The other side is the forces of Zeon, who are using amputee pilots to test experimental suits and defend their supply routes at the same time, led by their star sniper Daryl Lorenz. The two inevitably clash in the wreckage, but only one can survive.

STORY:

I had heard nothing but rave reviews for the Thunderbolt OVAs, both from seasoned Gundam fans and newcomers. Thanks to that, I was eager to check out its source manga and see what it was like. While there's a lot in here that I do like and do think is interesting, I have a sneaking suspicion that it works better in animation than it does in manga form.

Thanks to various spinoffs in just about every medium you can think of, it's hard to find space for a new story within the larger context of the One Year War (aka the events of the original Mobile Suit Gundam). The particular spot that Thunderbolt has settled into is smaller and less ambitious than most, considering that it's not about great battles, notable names, or crazy Newtype powers but instead two smaller factions having the space equivalent of a border skirmish on the verge of the end of the war. In that sense, it's spiritually closer to something like 08th MS Team than anything else. Ohtagaki makes up for that lack of scale by digging deep into the stories of both sides. Io and Daryl get virtually equal screen time on the page, and through them we get a very good sense of things on both sides of the war.

It's just a shame that neither of them are all that interesting onto themselves. Both of them have major traumas in their past - Io lost his family and his home, while Daryl lost his legs in battle - but I couldn't tell you much about the two beyond that save for their mutual love of a pirate jazz radio station. There are a few other story lines going on around them, but half of them are there simply to serve as cannon fodder, minor tragedies there to enhance the dour mood. Since I couldn't get that invested in them, it was hard to care all that much about the outcome of their battles. Maybe they get some interesting development later on, but so far it feels like this interesting setting is being wasted on these guys.

ART:

It's hard to miss the fact that this comes from a seinen magazine. That's why the leads tend to be rugged, the supporting cast can be a bit goony looking, and the token women (one per side) all tend to have sizeable chests, pillowy lips, and sultry looks. Ohtagaki certainly puts a lot of care into the details of the suits and the drifting debris of the colony's structure and buildings. He also does the same for the battles, although it takes a few chapters for him to truly get the hang of it. By the end, though, during Io and Daryl's first proper one-on-one, the fights are far better laid out and easier to follow.

PRESENTATION:

There are no extras, I just wanted to know that the guy who adapted this volume goes by Stan!

Yes, complete with exclamation point.

RATING:

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt has some interesting ideas and some good mobile suit battles, but two leading men aren't better than one if neither them is all that interesting enough to keep the audience's attention this early on. I guess I'll have to watch the OVA if I want to see what others see in this.

This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with six volumes available. Four have been published and are currently in print.

From UC side stories we move on to one of the more popular (or at least nostalgic) AU properties. Is it worth our lover, or simply all our hate and our sorrow?

MOBILE FIGHTER G GUNDAM (Kido Butoden Ji Gandamu), by Kouichi Tokita, based on the franchise by Hajime Yadate & Yoshiyuki Tomino. First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

In the Future Century, Earth has been ravaged by years of war. To prevent further disaster, the world governments have agreed to decide which nation rules the world through the Gundam Tournaments, where each nation's champion pilots a powerful mobile suit and fights their way to victory. As the 13th Gundam Tournament begins, Neo-Japan's champion Domon Kasshu hopes to use his powerful Shining Gundam to clear his father's name and stop his wicked brother from taking over the world with the help of his former mentor.

STORY:

G Gundam may be the closest to traditional shonen that Gundam has ever got, but it has a liveliness and commitment to its earnestness that makes it easy to overlook its goofiness (and abundance of awkward stereotypes). Even in print, it should be fun to read and easy to adapt to a manga for a kid's magazine. So how the hell did Tokita manage to make it so boring?

A big part of it is pacing. Initially it looks like Tokita is going to drag out the early arcs of the show, where Domon would wander the world shoving pictures in people's faces, screaming "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?", and getting into stand-still fights with the Gundam champion of the week. By the halfway point of the volume, he's only gotten up to Domon's second challenger, Sai Saici. Clearly the editors notice because the pacing shifts into the entirely opposite direction and it speeds through plot points at lightning speed. Those last couple of chapters not only cover the other two random opponents, but Domon's backstory, the betrayal of Master Asia, the appearance of the Shuffle Alliance, and even the first appearance of German champion Schwartz Bruder. That's a lot of material to cover in such a short span of pages, material that took the better part of a season to deliver. Quite frankly, it's too much info for such a short span, as it can only cover the most cursory of information about who is doing what and why. There's certainly no love or interest in the material, just the most rushed, workman-like treatment of the story possible.

ART:

Tokita's art is equally generic as his interpretation of the story, although it is at least an improvement on his Gundam Wing manga. The broader, more exaggerated character designs were clearly a lot more easy for him to grasp and draw than Wing's and he makes more an effort with the suits as well. Of course, he's still no good at drawing fights and he tends to lean heavily on the speed lines to make up for the stiff poses and faces. Still, it's a step up from before and at least this time the fonts and translation quality were a lot more even.

RATING:

G Gundam's manga lacks the fighting spirit of the show that inspired it. It's too rushed and too plain looking to inspire even the youngest reader, much less Gundam fans.

This series was licensed by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available. All 3 were published and are currently out of print.

The majority of Gundam manga out there are spinoffs, be they spinoffs of shows, other Gundam manga, or (in this case) video games. The vast majority of these go unlicensed, but today's review is one of the rare exceptions. So what, if anything, makes this one so special?

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: THE LOST WAR CHRONICLES (Kido Senshi Gundam Senki), with art by Masato Natsumo, based on the game by Tomohiro Chiba and Bandai Games, the franchise by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino, and character designs by Koji Aisaka and Toshihiro Kawamoto. First published in 2002 and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

During the height of the One Year War, Zeon forces control much of Western Europe from their base in Odessa, Lithuania. It is here at this fateful spot that an elite, experimental squad of Federation pilot plan on striking back, led by the dashing Lt. Matt Healy and Corporal Noel Anderson. Even as failures and infighting amongst the Zeon troops force them to change their strategy, Matt's forces are confident that they can win.

STORY:

I was pleased with how well Lost War Chronicles worked as a manga. That's no small feat for an adaptation of a PS2 third-person shooting game that was never localized here. If it has any major failings, it's that it lacks character and context for anyone who hasn't memorized UC-era Gundam canon.

I suspect that this particular manga was brought over not only because it was relatively recent, but because it shares some surface similarities with the beloved 08th MS Team OVA. Both are stories set mid-war about a group of everyday soldiers fighting back against an overwhelming force of Zeon soldiers, and this manga even features some of the suits seen in that series. That's where the similarities end, though. Thanks to its video game roots, there's a sizable cast of original characters, but all of them archetypal as they come. There's the brash young squadron leader who doesn't play by the rules but gets results, the idealistic and talented rookie, the morally conflicted enemy leader to serve as the lead's counterpart, a raving, egotistical superior officer, and so many more

Not shockingly then, this manga works far better as an action set-piece than as a character study. There are very few lulls between battles in this book. One will end, only for the gang to start implementing its plans for the next one. It's all fairly well-paced, even if none of the battles particularly stand out from one another. The problem is that there's virtually no context given for anyone who doesn't already know about the One Year War. Why is Odessa so important? What's the deal with these Zeon guys? What are even all these different mobile suits? This manga presumes you already know, so it doesn't stop to explain to the potential Gundam virgins in the audience. That's something you can get away with in the pages of Gundam Ace, but on its own Lost War Chronicles feels kind of driftless.

ART:

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the artist behind this one also did the Record of Lodoss War manga I looked at a while back. What's less pleasant to see is that his style was still stuck in the 90s even a decade later. He makes the characters a lot more angular than their game counterparts, and those cheekbone hatchmarks are taken straight out of the late 90s anime design textbook.

Aside from that, everyone has fairly realistic proportions and reactions. He also does a good job at drawing the mobile suits. There's at least dozen different ones here, and the differences are not always obvious so he deserves some praise for that. He also handles the action pieces quite well, framing the fights in an almost cinematic manner.

RATING:

Natsumo manages to make the most of what could have been just another piece of promotional fluff with Lost War Chronicles, but those who aren't already Gundam fans will likely find themselves at a loss with this manga.

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

It seems like no matter how many of these I do, I keep coming back to Gundam Wing. This one is the most recent attempt yet, having debuted this year in English. Can this version improve upon its precedesors? Can it possibly make Gundam Wing's story any more coherent?

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM WING ENDLESS WALTZ: GLORY OF THE LOSERS (Shin Kido Senki Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz: Haisha-tachi no Eiko), written by Katsuyuki Sumizawa, art by Tomofumi Ogasawara, and based on the franchise by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino. First published in 2010 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

In the year After Colony 195, the United Earth Sphere Alliance is at war with the space colonies orbiting Earth. To save themselves and fight back against the Alliance, a group of scientists send down five young pilots in powerful mobile suits to strike fear into the forces of OZ. As we follow the charismatic pilot Duo Maxwell, he learns that not only is he not the only Gundam pilot on earth but that their mission will force them to confront some of OZ's most skilled and dangerous pilots.

STORY:

Surely if anyone could take the overstuffed and needlessly convoluted plot of Gundam Wing and revamp it for a modern audience, it would be the original series composer, right? Sadly, not even he can completely make sense of it. If anything, he only complicates it more.

How can it make it more complicated? Why, by including bits and pieces of both Endless Waltz and some of the spinoffs! It seems I was getting ahead of myself when I said that Episode Zero was completely non-canonical, as Sumizawa shows us brief glimpses of Duo's, Heero's and Relena's backstories from that manga. He also apparently incorporates details from Frozen Teardrop, a sequel novel series written by Sumizawa that was published at the same time, another work with a dubious relation to canon. Depending on how well you remember the show and what you think of those spinoffs, these additions will be baffling at best and infuriating at worst.

There is one change that does work for the better: his choice of protagonist. Duo fits the role so much better than Heero ever did, thanks to his gregarious nature, hot temper, and natural curiosity. By shifting Heero out of that role, he becomes something of a man of mystery, which gives Duo something to focus on in this early part of the story. This comes at the expense of the other main characters, as Relena's story is largely relegated to an awkward flashback and the other boys make little more than cameos. Then on top of juggling all of those stories, he has to include the simultaneous plot threads for ace OZ pilot Zechs Marquise, OZ leader Treize Kushrinada and some of the other scientists. There's simply too many stories going on all at once to keep completely straight and he doesn't so much weave them together as he does shift jarringly from one to the next with little rhyme or reason. The show had this problem too, but since this manga condenses these events somewhat, the problem is amplified. In his attempts to fix the show's problems, the writer somehow made new ones and made some pre-existing ones worse.

ART:

Ogasawara has mostly worked on shonen manga and light novel illustrations, but he does a amazingly good job at capturing the look of Gundam Wing. The characters are on-model and lovingly detailed, even if their expressions are far from the most vivid. His paneling flows splendidly, so even when things get busy it's easy to follow the chain of events. He also does a good job with the suits, which in another major change are based on Hajime Katoki's redesigns from Endless Waltz instead of the original series designs by Kunio Okawara.

Well...he does a good job when you can actually see them. He seems to have a terrible habit of obscuring the battles with an overabundance of effects: explosions, dust clouds, gunblasts, splashing water, and so on. Combine that with ever-shifting perspectives and you get a formula for some brief yet confusing fight sequences that detract from what should be the highlights of the book.

RATING:

The Glory of Losers feels like a weirdly apt title for this series. It tries to take the story of Gundam Wing and make it feel new. At times, it almost works thanks to some good changes and art that is largely strong. It just makes too many changes at once while trying to give all the major characters screentime and make four different works mesh together into one whole, and the end result is a mess.

This series is published by Vertical. This series is complete in Japan with 13 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in-print.

It's time to kick off our fifth year of the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review extravaganza! As always, I'll be putting up a new review every day from the 1st of the month to Christmas covering some of the manga and manga trends that defined 2017.

That also means that this is our fifth year of the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday giveaway! Our prize is once more a $25 RightStuf gift certificate, and entry is as simple as always. All you have to do is leave a comment below noting what your favorite manga of the year was before Christmas Day. It doesn't necessarily have to have be a new series, so long as it was new to you. After the holidays, I will pick one winner at random from said comments. In the mean time, enjoy the season, enjoy the reviews, and get to commenting!

Let's kick things off with what is indisputably one of the biggest manga titles of the year. This title not only made a splash with manga fans, but with the LBGTQ community as well. As we speak, it's currently popping up on more than a few Best of Comics lists (and will likely appear on many more before the month ends). So what was it about this title that spoke to so many?

MY LESBIAN EXPERIENCE WITH LONELINESS (Sabishisugite Rezu Fuzoku Ikimashita Repo), by Nagata Kabi. First published in 2016 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

This autobiographical tale covers the author's descent into depression and anxiety issues when life after high-school leaves her feeling adrift and desperate for the approval of others. After a lot of rumination and lifestyle changes, she decides that perhaps part of the problem is that she craves physical affection but has never had sex. So, she hires a lesbian escort to help her take care of things. Is this act the solution to her problems or just the beginning of another personal revelation?

STORY:

There's a couple reasons that I believe explain why My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is making such mark outside of manga circles. Some of it may have to do with its origins as a webcomic and thus removed to some degree from the conventions of everyday manga. Another reason may be that this sort of raw, confessional sort of story is something that we seldom see outside of the western independent comic scene. The biggest reason of all may just be the fact that Kabi's experiences may be more universal than a lot of people would like to admit.

Despite what the title may suggest, this is not so much a story about coming out as it is a story about coping with mental illness. That's not to say that she doesn't struggle with coming to terms with her orientation and even her gender to a degree, but the majority of the book is about her trying (and occasionally succeeding) to cope with her depression and anxiety issues. True to life, there is no singular cause to her misfortune. At any given time, it may be triggered by her underemployment, her parents' nitpicking and lack of affection, or just her latest attempts to clearly define just what she wants and needs. It tends to manifest in different ways, be it in self-harm, in eating disorders, or just a general lack of hygiene.

Also true to life, she finds that there is no singular solution to her problems. Sometime, relief comes in the form of taking a long walk or in the kind words of encouragement from an interview. Sometimes her self-reflection leads her to a realization which allows her to stabilize her life to some degree and find a new focus. Sometimes it comes from doing something bold like hiring a female escort and going to a love hotel. These highs and lows aren't structured like a tidy three-arc plot but instead in the way life tends to work: an endless cycles of emotional ups and downs, where each new moment of clarity brings new challenges to overcome. Therein lies the inspirational quality of her story.

As a cis, straight, and (as far as I'm aware of) neurotypical woman, I'm fully aware that my life is not all that much like Kabi's. Even then, I could still relate to her struggle to find and keep work and empathize with depressive moments. Her struggles are ones that a lot of young people are dealing with and can sympathize with. In that sense, My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is a universal work and that is why it's managed to reach so many western readers.

ART:

Something else that helps to make My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness so approachable is the art. It would easy enough to dismiss as merely cute, considering that she tends to draw herself as a somewhat squiggly bobblehead of a girl and her expressions tend to be big and manic regardless of mood. Between this and her choice to use a soft, soothing shade of pink for accent, it's like she was purposefully choosing a style which helped to take the edge off of the content of the book, be it the heavy emotional turmoil or the later sexual encounters.

Looking over it again for review, I really appreciate the little details she added, things like the detail of the cityscapes, her use of hatching for both shadow and effect, the humor she brought to her visual similes. I was also impressed with her composition. Every page is made up of the same four panels, but it never looks nor feels boring because she finds ways to frame herself that are varied and engaging but not so much as to distract from her words. It's a combination that works well and it's easy to see how this managed to become such a breakout hit even in the vast, porn-filled world of pixiv.

RATING:

I'm so glad that Seven Seas took a risk with My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness. It's rare to find a manga that deals with such frank subject matter in a way that is messy, endearing, and even hopeful. It's already paving the way for more confessional webmanga to come our way (including its own sequel) and it's a book that any discerning manga reader needs to check out for themselves.

This book is published by Seven Seas. It is currently in print.

Want to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to purchase manga like this one? Then make sure to enter the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review Giveaway here!

One of the most surprising trends to come out of 2017 was the rise of yuri manga. We saw not only more new titles, but also more publishers taking a chance on it. It's safe to say that no one pushed the boundaries of yuri more than Yen Press with this series, though.

MURCIELAGO, by Yoshimurakana. First published in 2013 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

Kuroko Koumori is a vicious killer with over 700 victims to her name. Instead of execution, she is given a new job: to kill any criminal deemed too dangerous or too strange for the police. With her cutesy assistant Hanako, she'll take on everything from a drugged-up killer wrestler to a couple of wanna-be robbers to a murder mansion full of traps and other career criminals like herself, all while hitting on every pretty girl she sees.

STORY:

Okay, it might be a stretch to call this yuri. Kuroko likes the ladies, but Murcielago puts just as much emphasis on the literal, bloody variety of action as much as the sapphic variety.

Make no mistake, this is the sort of quality ultraviolence we haven't seen in manga form in many a year. It manages to strike a delicate balance between its own darkly wacky sort of sense of humor and some wildly gruesome premises without veering too hard in either direction. Most mangaka need at least a few chapters to find their groove with any manga, so the fact that Yoshimurakana manages to nail the tone right from the start is commendable.

It helps that Kuroko herself is a great protagonist, even if she's far from a good person. She should be repellent, considering that she's a hardened murderer with over 700 victims to her name and works basically as an assassin for hire for the police. Yet we also see her care for her ditzy, child-like assistant/driver Hinako like a kid sister, drool over the latest cute lady to cross her path like a harem protagonist, or calmly and professionally thread her way through a series of killer traps. Already she has quite a few layers to her personality, and again they manage to combine in a way that manages to confidently tread that fine line between grim and goofy. No one else in the cast can quite rival her, but frankly they don't need to when Kuroko serves as such a capable anchor for the stories around her.

The story also doesn't bog things down with too much backstory. This first volume is basically two major action set-pieces sandwiching the backstory. The highlight is the second of the former, in which Kuroko is trapped inside a murder mansion with a bunch of other career criminals. She gets to interact with the closest thing she has to peers, and it's a delight to see her bounce off of all these different personalities with their different specialties. So at least for right now, I don't need any larger overarching plots to Murcielago so long as it manages to maintain its tight tonal balance, keeps the spotlight on Kuroko, and keeps finding gory new ways to keep her occupied.

ART:

As much as I loved her, it has to be said: Kuroko is a weird-looking character. Most of the others around her are drawn either in a very bouncy, cutesy sort of way or the sort of exaggerated, gritty looks that you tend to see in this sort of sensationalized seinen. Meanwhile, she has this long, gangly body that manages to look even ganglier thanks to her oversized rack. Her face is downright minimalist, with heavy-lidded eyes and a squiggle of a mouth. She's so long and tall that she often has to bend in unnerving ways just to fit in frame. At the very least she tends to do a lot of SHAFT-style head tilts. She basically looks like a murderous female version of Yowamushi Pedal's Midousuji and that will either distract you forever or make you smile.

Yoshimurakana does not hold back when it comes to the content. There's a fair bit of gore here as people go squish in many different ways and they don't shy away from showing it. She also doesn't shy away from Kuroko's sexuality, considering that the first time we see her she is straight-up scissoring her girlfriend. It's not graphic - this isn't hentai, after all - but there's no question about what's going on. That said, they are great at making every page flow as smoothly as silk. They also get really inventive with the chapter title panels. Whether it's written on Kuroko like a Bond Girl or part of Hinako's crayon drawings, it's a whimsical touch that I never got sick of. It's little things like this that give this manga its own particular charm.

RATING:

Murcielago isn't going to be to everyone's taste, but if you're the sort of person who has been looking for a new manga to itch the scratch started by manga like Hellsing, this is for you.

This series is published by Yen Press. This series is ongoing in Japan with 8 volumes available. 4 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Want to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to purchase manga like this one? Then make sure to enter the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review Giveaway here!

OK, let's look at some proper yuri from the genre's first and biggest supporter: Seven Seas. They put out a lot of good yuri titles this year, but this one may be the cheeriest of them all.

KASE-SAN AND MORNING GLORIES (Kase-san shirizu...), by Hiromi Takashima. First published in 2010 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

Yamada and Kase first meet when they discover that they have been both tending a patch of morning glories on the school grounds. From that point on, Yamada is obsessed with Kase but believes herself to be too untalented to be worth of Kase's notice. Will Yamada ever find the courage to tell Kase how she feels? Or at least stop denying her feelings long enough to realize she's in love?

STORY:

Plot-wise, Kase-san doesn't do a lot differently that most of the other yuri titles out there. It's about a couple of high-school girls, with one who is short and femme and another who is tall and athletic. There's a lot of misunderstandings and denials along with cutely awkward moments of romance, all capped off with a kiss. So what makes Kase-san stand out from the rest? It's the fact that it is completely, sincerely happy from beginning to end.

That's not to suggest that there is no conflict, although most of it is internal and on Yamada's part. Poor Yamada has a lot of self-esteem issues, not helped by her so-called friends mocking her name and dragging her into social situations where she's clearly not comfortable. It's little wonder that she would find the most comfort in being alone with the school's flower beds and why she blossoms so much as a person under Kase's gentle encouragement. It's also amusing to see just how much Yamada tries to deny her gayness, as if repeating the mantra of "but we're both girls!" will somehow banish her blatant and undeniable thirst for Kase. She's also not great at communicating her feelings, and a lot of the little issues she deals with between her and Kase are the sort that would easily be solved with a five minute conversation.

Still, there's just something so pervasively sunny about seeing these two get together. Theirs is not a romance marked by moments of high drama but instead by the simple, down-to-earth joys of singing along badly to a favorite song or going out on a shopping trip together. It's a yuri series with a slice-of-life sort of sensibility, and it's a welcome antidote to both the melodrama that tends to define yuri and to a year desperately in need of simple joys and warmth.

ART:

Takashima's art is equally bright and sunny, if not always so polished. She struggles sometimes with proportions, especially with Kase's arms. She draws these wonderfully cute and wacky faces, but they sometimes seem too small for the girls' heads and at other times seem to drift across them in weird ways. Maybe it's because they are seldom drawn with noses to anchor them to their heads. It gets less frequent as the volume goes on, but it can be kind of jarring at first glance.

Despite those misgivings, there's a certain charm to it all. I particularly like the way the girls will often extend or step out of their frames, which gives the paneling a loose, almost breezy quality. The girls' expressions are lively, adding a lot of comedy. What little fanservice can be found is framed less in the traditional manner, where the viewer themselves is passively ogling the characters, but instead as from the viewpoint of either Yamada or Kase as they furtively stare at one another's bodies. It's an unusual approach, but one that negates the creepiness that usually comes with such moments, which might otherwise spoil the mood.

RATING:

Kase-san doesn't necessarily tread any new narrative ground and struggles a little with its art in the early chapters, but it more that makes up for that with little moments of nuance and a cheerful attitude. I look forward to seeing this animated next year, but you shouldn't wait until then to start reading it for yourself.

This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Want to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to purchase manga like this one? Then make sure to enter the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review Giveaway here!

The most surprising thing about this year's yuri boom was seeing Viz get in on the act. Viz has always been one of the more cautious manga publishers when it comes to their licenses, so for them to pick up a couple of yuri titles is an incredibly encouraging sign for the future of yuri in the US. As easy as it would have been to pick their long-awaited print release of Sweet Blue Flowers here, I wanted instead to talk about the other yuri title Viz picked up.

AFTER HOURS, by Yuhta Nishio. First published in 2015, and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

Emi's night out at the club is going badly. Her best friend bailed on her to hit on a guy and now she's being cornered by a weird drunk. The night is saved when Kei, the DJ, takes her under her wing and shows her a good time. Now Emi finds herself increasingly drawn into Kei's world and to Kei herself, but at some point will have to come to terms with stuff like her current apartment and the boyfriend she's supposed to be living with...

STORY:

My prayers have been answered! This is the sort of yuri manga I've been wanting to read in English since I started this site! It's a story about adult women! Doing adult things! Dealing with adult issuse! And not a single high school in sight!

I cannot express the sheer novelty of reading a story about a 24-year-old and a 30-year-old. What's also great is that their ages actually factor into their personalities and problems. For example, Kei has the confidence and assurance of a woman who has reached her thirties. She knows what she wants out of her life, be it from her work, her friends, or her hook-ups. Emi, on the other hand, is fairly fresh out of college, drifting in and out of work, with no strong interests or feelings of her own. It makes perfect sense that she would find Kei's confidence and openness alluring. It also makes sense why she would more or less move in with Kei after their first night together and keep putting off and avoiding dealing with what few responsibilities she does currently have.

What really struck me about After Hours, though, was the sort of ephemeral moments and moods it captures. There's the coziness of a makeshift dinner in a tiny apartment, the camaraderie of friends shooting the shit in a late-night dinner, the peace of a sunrise over a normally busy street. Moments like these feel like they were actually taken from life, or at least written by someone who actually has some life experiences to refer to. As good as Emi and Kei are (as individuals and as a couple), it's the atmosphere around them that makes After Hours truly special.

ART:

If After Hours has any downsides, it's the female character designs. While they are cute as hell, they're also very moe and more than a little childish. You wouldn't guess that this is a romance between two adult women just from looking at the cover. It's also not done across the board, as the guys who do show up show a bit more variety in faces and body types. At least the girls are stylish, and I do like how Emi's tendency to wear her hair in plaits or pigtails helps to visually reinforce her relative immaturity to the reader.

I also appreciate the fact that it takes a very discreet and matter-of-fact approach to its potential fanservice. When Emi and Kei do sleep together, the scene fades to white. The only other time we see them naked is in the local public bathhouse, and even then the scene doesn't focus on their bodies (or even draw in the nipples), keeping the focus on the ladies and not their lady bits. That matter-of-fact approach also applies to the backgrounds. While most are clearly drawn from reference, they are mostly ordinary street fronts or the interior or Kei's cozy, vinyl-filled apartment.

RATING:

After Hours is possibly the best yuri series to come out this year that virtually no one is talking about. That's a real shame because it's such a pleasant change from the norm. It's not just a well-written romance, but one with a lot of atmosphere and moments that will feel familiar to a lot of adult readers. I want this to be a success not just for its own sake, but with the hope that it might spur others to license other manga like it.

This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with 2 volumes available. 1 volume has been published and is currently in print.

It's no surprise that with the worldwide popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that someone in Japan would get the idea to try to create their own Avengers-style story with Japanese properties. The only problem is when they try to export them outside of Japan...

INFINI-T FORCE (Infiniti Fosu), based on multiple series by Tatsunoko Productions, written by Ukyou Kodachi and art by Tatsuma Ejiri. First published in 2015 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

Emi Kaido's ordinary high school life is changed forever when she receives a mysterious package with a pencil that claims to grant wishes. Then during a store hold-up she finds herself wishing for a hero and involuntary drawing four different figures. These turn out to be four costumed heroes from four different universes, each of them with their own motivations. Together with Emi and her magic pencil, they must find a way to work together and protect Emi's universe from evil forces gathering within Emi's universe.

STORY:

This franchise exists for one reason: to promote and update some of Tatsunoko's old animated properties by turning them into a superhero team. There's just one problem: most of these properties are completely unknown to your average American otaku. Some of them might remember Gatchaman from Gatchaman Crowds, that weird Tatsunoko vs. Capcom fighting game, or possibly even from its time as Battle of the Planets. The rest range from "obscure" (Casshan and Tekkaman) to "never localized in the US" (Hurricane Polymar). It's hard to get excited for the appearance of a hero one has never heard of, no matter how much of a production the manga tries to make of it.

It's not like any of these guys are all that interesting on their own. Ken is an scold, Takeshi (aka Polymar) is an aloof vigilante, Casshan is a sad robot boy, and Joji (aka Tekkaman) is gentle and fatherly. Then there's Emi, who is meant to be a high-schooler but is written more like a ditzy preteen. She tends to plunge herself into danger needlessly in the name of 'helping,' which most of the time serves only to turn her into a damsel for one of the guys to save. If it wasn't for the fact that Emi is the only one who can activiate the pencil's powers and has a conveniently huge and empty apartment on hand, she could be written out of the story entirely.

The Avengers worked as a superhero mash-up because Marvel had taken the time to establish most of the players in the hearts and minds of the world and make them compelling characters in their own right before bringing them all together. Infini-T Force tries to do the latter without doing the former, and the result is a manga that feels hollow and forced.

ART:

At least some care was put into the art...at least, the art for the heroes. Their character designs are great, as each of them are distinct and handsome both in and out of costume. Ejiri clearly tries to dress up the goofy old sentai-style costumes into more stylized body armor, and for the most part his efforts were a success. What's less successful is trying to integrate these guys with Emi and the other ladies in this series, who might as well be another species. While the guys are tall and well-defined, the girls are round and squishy and (at least in Emi's case) prone to goofy SD reactions. The fights are also something of a mixed bag. The poses themselves are clear and strong, but the panels flow stiffly from one to the next, which defuses a lot of the thrill that should be there.

RATING:

Infini-T Force is just one of the many examples of a corporation trying to create a shared universe out of nothing. It turns out when you mash up a bunch of old characters without context or charm, you end up with a big pile of nothing to show for it.

This series is published by Udon. This series is ongoing in Japan with 4 volumes available. 1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

Want to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to purchase manga like this one? Then make sure to enter the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review Giveaway here!

Of course, the real stand-out action manga from this year wasn't any sort of super-hero related thing, but instead a historical piece that's just as much about the anthropological detail as it is about intense survival action.

GOLDEN KAMUY (Goruden Kamui), by Satoru Noda. First published in 2014 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

"Immortal" Saichi Sugimoto is a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War who simply wants to make some money to save his former sweetheart from poverty and potential blindness. He gets his chance when a prospector clues him in on a fortune in gold stolen from the local Ainu people, where the only clues are tattooed on the skin of escaped prisoners. His search leads him to Asirpa, an Ainu girl with a personal stake in his search and the survival skill he'll need if he is to survive the harsh Hokkaido winter.

STORY:

Most of the reviews I've seen for this compare to the works of people like Jack London or Ernest Hemingway, and I see where they would get that idea. There are a lot of scenes of Sugimoto fighting for his life against both man and nature, as well with what is clearly a pretty nasty case of PTSD. Even the time period fits. Yet while Sugimoto's story is certainly compelling and well-written, it's not what makes Golden Kamuy truly stand out for me.

One of those stand-out elements is Asirpa herself. Seinen stories like this have a bad tendency to ignore women outside of family and love interests, so seeing Asirpa treated like Sugimoto's equal and not just a vehicle for fanservice or a fawning follower is a welcome relief. She's more than able to hold her own thanks to her hunting and survival skills, and some of the best scenes in the manga come from her watching Sugimoto squirm when she exposes him to some new dish of animal offal. She's also the one who tends to bring out Sugimoto's better qualities, whether it be through restraining him during a rage or helping him better understand her culture and the environment around them. She's both the brains and heart of this duo, and the story is better for having her in it.

The other thing that makes Golden Kamuy stand out is the attention to detail Noda puts into it. It's seldom that you come across a manga with a bibliography, much less with additional credits for a language consultant and special thanks to a couple of museums. He put so much research and effort into the time period, into the setting, and in particular towards the culture and language of the Ainu. He weaves it into the story in a way that shows it off without completely derailing the story, lending the world of Golden Kamuy the sort of verisimilitude I've only seen previously in the works of Kaoru Mori and Makoto Yukimura. It's an extraordinary touch to what is already shaping up to be an incredible manga.

ART:

That attention to detail extends to the art. The backgrounds, the details on the characters' wardrobe, the animals, all of it is beautifully rendered as close to photorealistic as possible. That does include gore, so the hunting scenes and some of Sugimoto's flashbacks do merit that parental advisory sticker on the front. The only thing that isn't photorealistic are the characters themselves. Again, much like Kaoru Mori, he draws very attractive and fairly simple in structure, but that also allow him to get a lot of nuance and exaggeration out them, depending on what a scene may call for.

He also draws incredible action, regardless of whether Sugimoto is fighting against man or beast. He guides the reader's eye across the page through clever use of perspective and blows that unconsciously lead the read to the focal point of each frame. He also keeps the panel borders pretty flexible, as the characters regularly stand and extend out of frame. Thus, like the story the artwork always keeps things moving.

RATING:

Golden Kamuy has it all: a novel and well-researched plot, great characters, thrilling action, gorgeous artwork. There's no good reason to not get this one for yourself.

This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with 11 volumes available. 2 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Want to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to purchase manga like this one? Then make sure to enter the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review Giveaway here!

Of course, the isekai trend continues unabated in the world of light novels and most of those end up with a manga adaptation for good measure. Of course, the longer a trend goes on, the less inspired and more lazy it gets...at least, if this book has anything to say about it.

DEATH MARCH TO THE PARALLEL WORLD RHAPSODY (Desu Machi Kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyosokyoku), based on the novel by Ayamegumu, art by Hiro Ainana and character designs by Shri. First published in 2014 and first published in North America in 2017.

PLOT:

Ichirou Suzuki is a programmer who is currently in the middle of a crunch to finish a new JRPG. In the middle of testing, he falls asleep only to find himself in the game in a younger form of his body. A chance encounters gives him all the resources, levels, and skills he needs to get by, so he's content to lay low, explore the world, and try to learn as much as possible from the many pretty girls that come his way so he can find his way back. It seems this dream world has a greater destiny for him in mind, though, and he'll have to put all his knowledge of the game to the test.

STORY:

I get that these isekai stories exist by and large exist to serve as adolescent male wish-fulfillment. I have to wonder just how much fulfillment any reader, teen boy or otherwise, could get out of a work like Death March. What kind of satisfaction can come from a fantasy where the hero faces virtually no challenges and has everything handed to him on a silver platter?

Suzuki (or Satou, as he's known in the game) is exceptionally bland as far as protagonists go. The big difference between him and the Kiritos and Subarus of the world is that while he looks like a teen in-game, he still has the mind of a 30-year-old man who knows the game's mechanics inside and out. There are some positives to this, in the form of a strong practical streak and a decidely un-pervy approach to the many girls who cross his path. I can't imagine a lot of the teen boys who star in these stories worrying about things like making sure they have a change of clothes, after all. The downside to that is that Satou doesn't seem to have any strong emotions at all. He still believes it all to be a dream and doesn't want to make waves, so he takes a laissez-faire approach to everything.

The bigger problem is that Satou has no major problems to face. It's not even like he's using his programmer skills to cheat or hack his way through the game system, which might be a mildly clever twist. Nope, instead it just hands him whatever he needs right from the start, be it resources, high-powered magic, or an endless array of skills (to the point that it serves as the manga's primary running gag). He doesn't have to struggle with making friends and allies, as everyone but the most obvious villains warm to him instantly. He can't even be bothered to get upset at obvious injustices around him, such as the presence of slavery. Satou has nothing to overcome or works towards other than the vague goal of getting back to his world, so it's little wonder that neither he nor his story has any sort of real forward momentum.

So with no personality to fill the gaps with and no goal to achieve, Death March fills the time in the only way that any light novel adaptation knows how: by talking endlessly. Nary a page goes by without somebody yammering on about their perfectly generic fantasy world, whether Satou is purposefully pumping them for information or not. It also drops more than enough obvious hints that Satou is going to be some big Hero of Legend, although it's hard to tell whether Satou is purposefully overlooking them to lay low or is simply that dense. Either way, it's the finishing touch in what may just be the laziest, most boring take on this style of story yet.

ART:

True to form as a light novel manga adaptation, the artwork here is exceedingly mediocre. The character designs are bog-standard for this sort of fantasy story, and virtually everyone seems to have the same generic, dopey face. At least they go out of their way to avoid fanservice, as all the girls have perfectly sensible armor and clothing and not the sort of overdesigned, skimpy nonsense that tends to plague modern fantasy settings.

The backgrounds are perfectly competent, if nothing all that notable. It's hard to take much note of them, though, because the pages have to accommodate so much talking. That means the pages and panels alike tend to be small and cramped and that at least half of them are little more than talking heads. It's far from the worst of its sort that I've seen, but it doesn't make much of a case for itself as a stand-alone work either.

RATING:

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody manages to be lazier than average through sheer lack of conflict and personality. With so many other stories like this out there with a lot more inspiration behind them, why waste your time with this?

This series is published by Yen Press. This series is ongoing in Japan with 4 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Want to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to purchase manga like this one? Then make sure to enter the Manga Test Drive's annual Holiday Review Giveaway here!

Review: ANGEL SANCTUARY

Review: CHEEKY ANGEL

Review: FALLEN MOON

Review: GUARDIAN ANGEL GETTEN

Review: LUCIFER AND THE BISCUIT HAMMER

Review: THE DEMON ORORON

Review: THE DEVIL'S SECRET

Review: STRAY LITTLE DEVIL

Review: MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM THUNDERBOLT

Review: MOBILE FIGHTER G GUNDAM

Review: MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: THE LOST WAR CHRONICLES

Review: MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM WING: THE GLORY OF LOSERS

CHRISTMAS TIME!

Holiday Review: MY LESBIAN EXPERIENCE WITH LONELINESS

Holiday Review: MURCIELAGO

Holiday Review; KASE-SAN AND MORNING GLORIES

Holiday Review: AFTER HOURS

Holiday Review: INFINI-T FORCE

Holiday Review: GOLDEN KAMUY

Holiday Review: DEATH MARCH TO THE PARALLEL WORLD RHAPSODY