The Manga Test Drive

From harem manga, we move on to reverse harem manga. It's been a while since we've gotten a new one; most of the more prominent shoujo titles have focused either on supernatural romances or more traditional schoolroom stuff. It even got the benefit of having a (fairly good, from my understanding) anime to pave a path for it. So can it live up to its modest hype?

YONA OF THE DAWN (Akatsuki no Yona), by Mizuho Kusanagi. First published in 2009 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

Princess Yona is the pampered child of the gentle King Il in a faraway kingdom. While she wants for nothing, the only thing she truly wants is the love of her childhood friend and cousin Su-Won. Her life is forever altered when Su-Won slays her father in a bloody coup. She's forced to flee for her life with only her personal guard Hak to protect her. Will Yona find the strength within herself to continue on, or will she be consumed by her grief?

STORY:

Yona of the Dawn manages to temper its frothy reverse harem trappings with some serious drama. Were it not for some poor timing with some flashbacks, it would be an outstanding debut.

That being said, a lot of the elements Kusanagi uses are pretty standard for the shoujo world. We have a sheltered, lovesick teenage girl for a heroine, complete with red hair that she loathes but others find beautiful. There's a snarky, dark-haired future love interest who alternates between fighting with her and admiring her from afar. There's even a light-haired princely type whose placid exterior hides a secret. Were it not for the faux-historical Korean setting, this could be the start of many a popular shoujo story.

Then the princely type flat-out murders the heroine's father in cold blood and shit get real.

What makes Yona really effective is how seriously it takes this trauma. Yona isn't just sad, she's nearly catatonic from her grief and betrayal. She spends most of the second half mentally sorting out her feelings for Su-Won. Were Yona a more shallow character, this might come off as turning her into a load in constant need of rescue. Instead it's handled with enough nuance to actually lend her some depth. Even Hak ceases being a jackass by doing his best to make her comfortable while still giving her some space to sort stuff now. What really surprised me was that to some degree, they did the same with Su-Won. It would have been easy to have written him off as a cackling villain and be done with it. Instead he's shown to have doubts about his actions and is also mourning his sister-like affection for Yona. I'm sure the dramatic payoff won't be coming for some time, but it's good to get a plot thread like that going so early.

The only real misstep here is indulging in a couple of extended flashbacks right after Yona is forced to flee. It's not like they're completely unnecessary, as they help to establish how the dynamic between Yona, Hak and Su-Won came to be. It also fills in a few other details, such as hints towards Su-Won's upbringing. Nonetheless, it stops the momentum of the story dead in its tracks and it takes a while for things to pick back up again. I feel like they would have worked better as bonus chapters than they do as part of the main story. Still, if that's the worst thing this first volume can do, then it promises that things will only get better and more interesting from here.

ART:

The most notable thing about Yona of the Dawn's art is the Korean influence on the setting. It's obvious in the names, in how the silhouette of the costumes more strongly resemble hanboks than kimonos, and in the occasional glance at exotic, ornate rooms of Yona's palace. It doesn't add much beyond some fanciful flare, but it's a nice change of pace from the expies of ancient Japan and China that more frequently populate these sorts of stories. In comparison, the characters themselves are drawn more conventionally, all wide-eyed and pretty. There are some nicely drawn glances from the side, but Kusanagi isn't bringing anything new to the table here. The same goes for her composition. It's perfectly effective, but she doesn't do anything striking or breathe life into the occasional bit of fighting. It's just a little disappointing that the artwork can't live up to the standards of the story.

RATING:

Yona of the Dawn is deeper than the pretty boys and average art would suggest. There's emotional nuance here that's not always seen in shoujo. If it can keep this up, then Yona of the Dawn can turn into something truly special.

This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with 23 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and all are currently in print.

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Yen Press scored a hell of a deal last year. Not only did they rescue Fruits Basket, one of the last remaining gems of the Tokyopop library, but also picked up Natsuki Takaya's two most recent (and up to that point, unlicensed) works. We only have time and space enough to check out one of those two, but I'm sure you're just as curious as I am to discover what a post-Fruits Basket Takaya is like.

LISELOTTE & WITCH'S FOREST (Rizerotte to Majo no Mori), by Natsuki Tayaka. First published in 2011 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

Once upon a time, a noblewoman named Liselotte exiled herself to a distant forest along with her two servants Anna and Alto. Her situation was born from tragedy, but she's determined to be helpful and make the most of her exile, no matter how much Alto might object. After all, it's said that there are dangerous witches in the woods. There's also a strange young man named Engetsu who reminds Liselotte of her past, but he might not be all that he appears to be...

STORY:

It would have been easy for Takaya to rest on her laurels and basically just keep making variations on Fruits Basket for the rest of her career. While there definitely are some recycled ideas here, Liselotte & Witch's Forest does distinguish itself as a pleasant little fantasy tinged with tragedy.

It's really hard to look at Liselotte and not see more than a little bit of Tohru Honda in her. She's saintly and gentle in spite of a tragic past (complete with a dead relative) and she's got a bit of a guilt complex so she tries her hardest to make herself useful to others. She's perfectly endearing and harmless as far as heroines go, but she's also by far the most derivative part of it as well. Anna and Alto mostly exist for manzai-style comic relief, but Alto is a far more realized character than his twin. It's not just the fact that he's priggish, but he's also the only pragmatic one. He's the only one willing to call out how unusual this arrangement is and how much danger they are in. In other words, he's the perfect antidote to Liselotte's sunniness and together the trio balances out one another nicely.

Alto's not wrong about the danger, mind you It was danger that brought them to the woods and now there's the danger of the witches said to roam the woods. Then there's Engetsu, a mysterious man who can fight witches but reveals else about himself or his past. A canny reader can probably guess a couple of things about him based on his actions and Liselotte's reactions to him. One of those suspicions is confirmed by volume's end; the other remains uncertain, but frankly if you've read enough shoujo you can see where this is going. He shakes up what otherwise would have been a rather tedious norm, but I do wish it didn't have to involve a particularly annoying little catboy. Catboys and reused ideas aside, this is a good start to a promising series. There's not much more to say since this is mostly just set-up and backstory, but she's clearly laying a good foundation for the story yet to come.

ART:

Takaya's art was always rather minimalist for shoujo. Her characters are comparatively plain for the genre, she tends to favor screentones over drawn backgrounds, and she's never gotten too crazy with her page and panel composition. Liselotte is no exception to this, but it also benefits from the advancements she's made as an artist just through time and practice. The characters are plain, but they've much more shaded and subtle than those in the early days of Fruits Basket. They now have literal dimension to go with the emotional dimension this story possesses. She emphasizes the emotion and distracts from her lack of backgrounds through a lot of close-ups. Thankfully, she opens things up visually for the big emotional moments: the big clutches, the searching glances, the outburst of emotion, and even a little bit of action when the witch actually shows up. It's frequent enough to keep the paneling from feeling too claustrophobic and altogether it supports the kind of quiet, occasionally somber feelings that the story has to offer.

RATING:

Liselotte & Witch's Forest shows that Takaya hasn't lost her touch. She may be reusing some ideas and she'll never be a spectacular artist, but she knows how to combine them with charm, tenderness, and skill to create something that feels fresh. Now if he can just get her off of hiatus and back to work on this one.

This series is published by Yen Press. This series is on hiatus in Japan with 5 volumes available. 2 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Want a chance to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to buy manga like this one? All you have to do is leave a comment here to enter this year's Annual Holiday Giveaway!

Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't necessarily be putting so much emphasis on bringing over josei works as we should on lady-friendly seinen works. Between Complex Age and today's subject, it seems to be where some of the most interesting work about women seems to be hiding.

PLEASE TELL ME! GALKO-CHAN (Oshiete! Galko-Chan), by Kenya Suzuki. First published in 2014 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

Galko is tall, busty, tanned and stylish, but few would suspect from her looks just how sweet and accomplished she is. Otako looks like a stereotypical otaku, but her real interest is in quizzing her friends about all sorts of weird questions about sex, puberty, and such. Ojou is sheltered and spacey, but she's also good at keeping the peace between friends. You wouldn't think that three such girls would ever be friends, but together they tackle some of the grosser, lesser-discussed parts of being a teenaged girl.

STORY:

Galko-chan is a hard sort of manga to pin down. It's not quite a 4-koma comedy, but neither is it a more traditional shoujo-like narrative. What can I say about it definitively is that it is entertaining, educational, and surprisingly fair.

It's really uncommon to find a manga series that talks (and mostly jokes) so honestly about some of its more woman-relevant subjects. Most manga wouldn't even dare to suggest that things like periods or body hair even exist, much less that the girls within them have to deal with it on a regular basis. The fact that this is coming from a male mangaka makes it all the more surprising. It handles these sorts of subjects honestly, with also with a lot of sympathetic humor. It understands the sort of weird questions and neuroses that young women can have about themselves and their bodies and it has fun with it without doing so at the character's expense. Okay, so maybe that's not entirely true since very often these subjects come up because Otako is amused by Galko getting flustered, but we the audience are meant to laugh with them, not at them. The only downside to this is that the humor is distinctly muted. There aren't a lot of obvious punchlines here, so the comedy (such as it is) can go over some folks' heads.

I'm also impressed with how much information Suzuki conveys about our three leading ladies in such a short format. Some of it is thanks to the mini-bios that appear on the side of every page, but a lot of it is done just through the girls' reactions. We also see them engaging in a lot of different activities all throughout the book. It's not just the obvious things like the girls going to the mall or the water park, but also things like Galko borrowing Il Postino from one of the class nerds and bringing her own homemade meals, Ojou mentioning things like private chefs or showing up to a shopping trip in full formal kimono, or how obvious Otako is projecting her own insecurities through her teasing. For the most part, tidbits like this aren't pointed out by others, but instead simply weave themselves into the larger picture. It shows that these girls truly are more than the stereotypes that their nicknames suggest, a notion that's supported by the final story where we learn how these three became friends. I'm all for any manga that's willing to step past the stereotypes and do something different, so it was almost something of a foregone conclusion that I was going to love Galko-chan.

Well, that and the fact that I had already fallen in love with the anime that had aired earlier this year. That certainly didn't hurt.

ART:

First of all, can I say that I love the cover art here? That may surprise you considering how busy it is visually. Then there's the fact that it's literally the first page of the comic with the dialogue taken out. So why do I like it? It gets the joke across with nothing but iconography and one borrowed word. If that's not a testament to the quality of the humor, nothing is.

It also clues the reader in to Galko-chan's most unusual feature: it's drawn in full-color. It's not just that it's colored, but that all of the linework is done in shades of blue and purple and accented with the occasional bit of colored pencil or colored screentone. It's a bold choice on Suzuki's part and it gives a lot of literal color and a certain air of femininity to Galko's otherwise mundane settings. It also highlights all the detail he puts into everything, from hair textures to the wrinkles in Galko's blazer to all the little items in the backgrounds. It also would have looked like garbage had they tried to reproduce it in black-and-white, so I can totally understand why Seven Seas chose to preserve the color.

Despite a lot of talk about boobs and underpants and whatnot, there's not a lot of fanservice to be found. Galko may be very busty, but it's a bustiness that's still possible in the real world especially when you factor in her height and her overall curviness. Indeed, I like that there's a lot of body diversity on display in the cast. It's not just the same old cute anime faces with different hairstyles slapped on them. There are tall girls, short girls, fat girls, skinny girls, busty girls, flat girls, and all sorts of stuff in between. Even the guys in the class benefit from this. Everyone is truly distinct. The only time that you might suspect that this is drawn by a man is when Galko puts on a bikini top. Seriously, can no one in Japan draw a bikini top that actually fits? At least the comic isn't as bad as some of the splash art near the beginning, where Galko's large bust is stretched to hentai-levels of ridiculousness.

The format is also a little unusual. It's kind of like what was done with My Girlfriend is a T-Rex, where each inquiry is covered in a 1-2 page spread. It gives each one the feel of a comedy sketch versus your traditional 4-koma format. This makes sense when you realize that this manga started out as a webcomic that was posted to Twitter. The page composition is also a little funky, as the ever-changing mini-bios on Galko, Otako, and Ojou require a little extra space on the sides to accommodate them. All of these little differences add up to a manga that truly stands out from the crowd.

RATING:

Please Tell Me! Galko-Chan is a refreshingly frank and light-hearted take on being a teenage girl. It's literally colorful and fun and I'm really glad that Seven Seas gave it a chance.

This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is ongoing in Japan with 3 volumes available. 1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

Want a chance to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to buy manga like this one? All you have to do is leave a comment here to enter this year's Annual Holiday Giveaway!

This might have been the first year in a long time that we started to see some movement as far as josei licenses. Not only did we finally get Princess Jellyfish in print, but Viz managed to slip a really good josei series into their Shoujo Beat line that deserves a lot more attention.

EVERYONE'S GETTING MARRIED (Totsuzen Desu ga, Ashita Kekkon Shimasu), by Izumi Miyazono. First published in 2014 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

Asuka Takanashi is a successful realtor, but her real dream is to get married and become a housewife. This is proving difficult, as her boyfriend of five years just broke up with her and most of the guys she meets are turned off at the idea of a woman who wants to settle down. Things only get more complicated when she meets handsome newscaster Ryu Nanami. He's coming out of an affair that ended badly and wants nothing to do with marriage, but there's an undeniable spark between the two. Can these two every make things work, or is their relationship doomed before it starts?

STORY:

Now THIS is the kind of josei I want Viz to be licensing! I've had my fill of smutty supernatural romance. Give me a story about actual adults dealing with actual problems that doesn't trade in a lot of the same old stupid romance tropes!

Despite what this premise might suggest, Everyone's Getting Married might be one of the most feminist-friendly manga I've come across in a long time. I love that Asuka's desire to be a homemaker is entirely her choice. She's not being forced into it because she's bad at her job or her higher-ups harass her or fears that she's going to be an old maid by her mid-20s. She simply wants to recreate the happy home life she had as a child with a family of her own, and it's not an easy choice. It tends to turn off a lot of prospective partners and a lot of her coworkers view those sorts of women negatively, so it becomes a surprisingly brave act for her to decide to settle down.

Meanwhile, I appreciate that Ryu has a lot more nuance than one usually sees in these sorts of romantic foils. It would have been easy to make him just another flippant playboy and end it there, but Miyazono doesn't take the easy way out. We see that like Asuka, he's still nursing the wounds from a recent break-up. We also see how much of his playboy schtick is just an act, and that underneath he is both a more casual and caring guy but also a very hard-working one. The only concession he makes to romance convention is that he's prone to starting make-out sessions when he's groggy.

A lot of josei takes its relationship cues from romance novels, and in doing so replicates a lot the problems that come with that genre. Everyone's Getting Married largely avoids them, and those it can't avoid it handles maturely. While Asuka and Ryu do fight occasionally, they mostly get along. Hell, Ryu is one of the few people who is completely supportive of Asuka's dream. She in turn gets him to open up about himself. It's easy to see why these two would get along most of the time and be attracted to one another, even if Ryu tries to deflect his attentions through teasing. On the rare occasion he pushes things too far, Asuka makes her anger plain and Ryu actually listens to her and stops. Do you know how rare it is to find a romance with adults where the couple doesn't fight or snark at each other all the time? Or one where the guy keeps pushing at the girl's boundaries until she submits to his seduction? Finding a manga series like this feels like finding a unicorn and I wonder if burying it in the Shoujo Beat line is actually doing it a disfavor. People might presume that it's just another tawdry romance when in truth it's anything but that.

ART:

They also might get that idea because Miyazono's artwork doesn't look all that different from a lot of shoujo and josei. The characters are drawn very much in the shoujo tradition where every girl is big-eyed and cute and every guy is generically handsome, despite their Dorito chins. Still, there's a nuance to their faces and movement that isn't so common and it goes a long way towards communicating just how Asuka and Ryu feel. It also doesn't trade in the sort of excessive sparkles and screentones that a lot of similar manga use. What little is there is unostentatious in its use, and overall there's an air of simple elegance to the panels and pages.

RATING:

If you want to see more josei that isn't just a bunch of lame smut or simply enjoy a well-written modern romance, then you owe it to yourself to read Everyone's Getting Married. It's got a maturity and a charm that is far too uncommon in romantic manga and it deserves to be a bit hit.

This series is published by Viz. This series is ongoing in Japan with 6 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Want a chance to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to buy manga like this one? All you have to do is leave a comment here to enter this year's Annual Holiday Giveaway!

Well, it's time to start wrapping things up with something warm and fuzzy. Naturally, what else could be warmer and fuzzier than a manga about a kitten?

FUKUFUKU: KITTEN TALES (FukuFuku Funyan Koneko da Nyan), by Konami Konata. First published in 2013 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

FukuFuku is a mischievous kitten. His attempts at play delight and charm his elderly owner as well the other cats in his neighborhood.

STORY:

Yeah...there's not a lot of story to be found here. Even more so Konata's other cat manga, FukuFuku is very slight with practically no story to speak of. I imagine a lot of people will dismiss it as just a ripoff of Chi's Sweet Home and leave it at that. Doing so is doing FukuFuku a disservice, though. If anything, this is cute cat manga boiled down to the purest essence.

It's true that FukuFuku doesn't have the story hooks that lent some depth to Chi's Sweet Home. His owner doesn't need to hide him or move, and FukuFuku doesn't have any concerns beyond food, play, doing whatever he feels like, and getting his way through sheer cuteness. It's technically a flashback, but for the most part it's just the reader following FukuFuku and his owner through the seasons. At most, we get a dream sequence themed around Alice In Wonderland, and stands out like a sore thumb because everything else is so un-fantastical. At least all the scenarios (save for that one) feel true to life, even if you yourself aren't an old traditional Japanese lady. Konata still knows how to make the most of each pounce and meow, and the result is always amusing and adorable. It also helps that FukuFuku is a very different cat from Chi. Chi was a blissful baby, always happy and curious about her world. In comparison, FukuFuku is more willful, even bratty. As much as I love Chi, FukuFuku feels more like an actual cat, full of contrariness. So while it ultimately may be slight, FukuFuku is still enjoyable in its own right and distinct from its predecessor.

ART:

Admittedly, Konata doesn't do a lot of things different when it comes to her art. Aside from his coloration, FukuFuku looks, moves, and emotes just like Chi. His elderly owner is drawn in very much the same simple, pudgy style that she draws people in. Her panels are still sparse and simply put together. The big difference is that his owner lives in a traditional Japanese home, but all that means is that the backgrounds involve paper doors and tatami mats instead of a typical, everyday apartment. It adds some visual flavor, but not much more beyond that. Otherwise, Konata knows what works for her art-wise and isn't going to change what already works.

RATING:

FukuFuku's charms are simple, and sometimes that's all you need to make a manga enjoyable. It's not Chi 2.0, but it's got enough differences to make its own mark among cat fanciers.

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

Want a chance to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to buy manga like this one? All you have to do is leave a comment here to enter this year's Annual Holiday Giveaway! It ends tomorrow, so don't delay!

Well, it's time to wrap this year's holiday review up, and much like I've done in the past, I end it with a series that's not just one of my favorites to come out this year, but one that's all about food and family. If that's not appropriate for Christmas, I don't know what is.

SWEETNESS & LIGHTNING (Amaama to Inuzuma), by Gido Amagakure. First published in 2013 and first published in North America in 2016.

PLOT:

Kouhei Inuzuka is trying his hardest to keep his life together after his wife's recent death. He not only has to juggle his teaching job, but also raising his 4-year-old daughter Tsumugi. As such, things like cooking fell by the wayside and they mostly subsist on take-out and restaurant food. Then they meet Kotori Iida, one of Kouhei's homeroom students. She's the daughter of a single mother herself, and thanks to her mother's job Kotori is often left alone in their family's empty restaurant. Kotori offers to help Kouhei learn how to cook, and together the three not only gain new skills but also the warmth and joy of family and friendship.

STORY:

It was pretty much a given that I was going to like Sweetness & Lightning. It's not just that it's a food manga, although that certainly helps. No, what has me coming back to this series time and again is how well it understands the feeling of togetherness and family, even if that togetherness is born more from circumstance and tragedy than blood.

There's a tinge of sadness to the story here that tempers what might otherwise be nothing but happy cooking fluff. After all, our protagonists are a single father and widower, a little girl who hasn't quite grasped that her mother is gone, and the daughter of another single parent who can't help but feel a little abandoned because of her mother's job. All of them are hurting in their own way but are too stuck in their respective ruts to get out. By coming together for their impromptu cooking classes, they fill up all the lonely voids in their life. Tsumugi gets to spend more time with her father and treats Kotori like the big sister she's never had. Kotori gets some of the parental guidance and acceptance she needs along with the companionship she craves. Kouhei gets some help with understanding Tsumugi's perspective and the joy of making his daughter happy with his own two hands. You'd have to be a immovable hardass to not get even a little bit of the feels from that, and Amagakure is very good at weaving it into each chapter without hammering it into the reader's head.

I also love how they handle Tsumugi as a character. It would be easy to make a little girl like her into a perfect saint or just a vehicle for kids-say-the-darndest-things comedy. Instead she's written like an actual 4-year old girl. She's not a perfect kid. She throws tantrums and sulks sometimes. She can be loud and wild sometimes. Yet she takes a true child-like delight in watching the cooking and helping out where she can. She feels real in much the same way that someone like Barakamon's Naru feels real. I also love how Kouhei isn't the perfect father. He's had the role thrust upon him unexpectedly, and while he's learned to manage some of the everyday stuff he doesn't have a lot of friends with children or nearby relatives to consult for advice. Thus, his cooking lessons also sometimes end up being parenting ones as well. He's learning and growing just as much as the girls are.

It's also just a plain good food manga. Each chapter is centered on the trio learning to make some new recipe, and all of the food they make is the Japanese equivalent of simple home cooking or fare for a bento box. While each chapter covers the process of cooking each meal pretty thoroughly, it doesn't get too hung up on detailing each little step. Instead, the focus is on how the trio react to each step and to the end results. The focus is on the emotion and the relationships and not the recipe. That onto itself is probably the best summary of what makes Sweetness & Lightning so special to me.

ART:

Amagakure's art isn't quite as polished as you tend to see in food manga. This is most obvious with the character designs. There's a scruffiness about them, most obvious with Tsumugi's wild mane of hair. Their faces break out into squiggly smiles and hatchy blushes. The paneling and composition is a little disorganized at times. Even the food isn't drawn with the sort of photorealistic detail that one usually sees in these sorts of stories. What it lacks in technical precision it more than makes up for in sheer charm. She captures the joy and the tears just through their faces. She reinforces the focus on the human elements of the story by keeping the visual focus on the main characters while cooking instead of on the actual chopping and boiling and whatnot. The emotion shines through every panel, and that ultimately is more important than any technical skill.

PRESENTATION:

Like any good food manga, it does include recipes. It just saves them for the end of each chapter. There's also a pretty thorough translation note section to cover all the different sorts of Japanese food and ingredients mentioned. Having read both the physical volume and the digital release, I can confidently say that there's virtually no difference between the two.

RATING:

Sweetness & Lightning hits my sweet spots for both food manga and heartwarming non-moe slife-of-life fare. Its understanding of emotion and relationships more than makes up for any technical flaws it might possess. Even if you already watched the animated version, it's worth reading if you want a big old dose of the feels.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics. This series is ongoing in Japan with 7 volumes available. 3 have been published and are currently in print. This series is also available digitally through Crunchyroll's manga service.

Want a chance to win a $25 RightStuf gift certificate to buy manga like this one? All you have to do is leave a comment here to enter this year's Annual Holiday Giveaway! It ends at midnight tonight, so don't delay!

First of all, let me announce the winner of this year's Annual Holiday Giveaway. The $25 RightStuf gift certificate will be going to...KIM P.!

Requiem of the Rose King is my favorite new manga since it's drawn by Aya Kanno and the story is based on Shakespeare so it's full of plot twists!

Congratulations Kim! You can claim your prize by either contacting me on Twitter at @brainchild129 or by sending a quick email to mangatestdrive @gmail.com. Also, I'm glad you're enjoying Requiem of the Rose King, as it continues to just get better and better. For me, it's easily Kanno's best and most ambitious work.

I doubt I'm going to surprise anyone when I declare that I'm glad to see 2016 go for reasons that are too many and (mostly) too political for this blog. That's really saying something considering that two very big and very happy events happened to me: I got married and I finally got to travel overseas, to Japan no less. It was also still a very good year for manga overall. The big shonen hits just kept on selling, and the market overall is still healthy and growing. We saw the debut of a lot of great shoujo and josei works, including the print debut of stuff like Orange and Princess Jellyfish. Seeing so many comments calling that their favorite of the year made me truly happy inside. It also makes me all the more regretful that I wasn't able to fit Princess Jellyfish into this month's lineup. I already had so many Kodansha titles! Choices had to be made! Even ongoing series like Requiem, The Ancient Magus' Bride, and My Love Story managed to just get better and better with each new volume.

The world is a big question mark as far as 2017 goes, but I do at least have hope that the world of manga will only continue to get more interesting and diverse. There's already a lot of interesting manga titles that will be turned into anime this year, and I'm eager to see how they go over with a wider audience. There's some interesting cult titles on the horizon, along with what I sincerely hope will be the breakout year for yuri in the US. Seriously, we've got nearly a dozen titles on the way from 3 different publishers, along with who knows how much more yet to come. At least one of them HAS to make an impression. Hell, maybe this year Udon will finally get around to putting out The Rose of Versailles. After all, what could be more appropriate for this upcoming year than a classic manga that ends in revolution?

The Manga Test Drive will be coming into its fifth year of existence, and as always I'm glad for all of you that have come along for the ride.

It's January once more, which means it's time for yet another month of CLAMP works. Let's start things off with one of their most recent works. Like most of those new works, it's a rehash of a previous work. In this case, it's a rehash of their most...troubled work. Has enough time passed that CLAMP can make some sense of it once more, or is it just more of the same?

TSUBASA WoRLD CHRoNiCLE:NIRAIKANAI, by CLAMP. First published in 2014 and first published in 2015.

PLOT:

Syaoran and company continue their quest across the multiverse. This time, he, Fai, Kurogane, and Mokona end up in the pleasant paradise of Niraikanai. It's a tropical island overseen by a young girl who serves as a divine vessel (as well as a vessel for noodles). To help them in their quest, she urges them to the entrance to the underworld. There the gang will meet up not only with another guardian, but also a lot more danger and mystery than they could have anticipated...

STORY:

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle's ending was no more well-received than xxxHolic's was back in the day. While its story fit the sort of "and the adventure continues!" ending it got, it went through a lot of convoluted nonsense to get there and most CLAMP fans wanted some actual closure after nearly 30 volumes. So when they announced a sequel, there was a tiny bit of hope that maybe this time they might wrap things up in a way that didn't require a flowchart to make the tiniest bit of sense. The joke was on us, though. World Chronicle is just more of the same, with all the same charms and many of the same flaws.

To their credit, reading this you'd never guess that CLAMP stopped writing Tsubasa for the better part of a decade. They pick up right where they left off and our team of adventurers are just the same as we left them. Syaoran is still his blandly heroic self, Kurogane is still a grump, and Fai and Mokona still team up on the regular to tease the hell out of Kurogane. The interepersonal dynamic between the group was always the most charming (if predictable) part of Tsubasa, so for me that's not a bad thing. Alas, the plot demands that Sakura be left home during all of this, so all she can do is pray from the sidelines and be just as bland as Syaoran. I guess that's better than being an often literal load like she was for most of Tsubasa, but it's little consolation.

When I say that it picks up right where it left off, that means all the little plot-related details too. That means that if you dropped this series at some point, you might not understand why Syaoran is so concerned about Kurogane's arm or why Syaoran and Watanuki are having a nice long chat at the very beginning. This intro actually pissed me off, albeit for reasons not related to this manga. The worlds of Tsubasa and xxxHolic are still as intertwined as ever, you see, and the same is true for their sequels. So Watanuki has to go right ahead and explain what he's been up to in the meantime. In doing so, he spoils the big twist about xxxHolic Rei. Good job spoiling your own manga before you finish it, CLAMP! Maybe I wanted to watch that unfold as it was released instead of you ham-handedly explaining it all here!

After that, the gang mostly dithers around this new universe for a while taking in the sights and enjoying the food. Quickly enough, though, the CLAMP multiverse cameos begin, and this time it's Gate 7's turn. Sadly, I lost interest in Gate 7 once it entered hiatus and Hana and her associates got less compelling over time so this inclusion didn't exactly thrill me. Also, it's probably not a good idea for them to so blatantly compare Fai and Kurogane to the expies of Sakura and Tachibane. It kind of makes it obvious how much the latter rip off the former in both looks and concept. Still, they're the ones that start pushing the plot forward, so I can deal with it.

It doesn't go very far, though, and it's not entirely clear what's going on. CLAMP has gotten into a bad habit lately of keeping their plots so mysterious and cryptic that it becomes nonsense. Tsubasa always suffered the worst from this and it seems that this has not changed where the sequel is concerned. That doesn't give me much confidence that CLAMP is going to make this manga any more focused or comprehensible than its predecessor. It's still got some of its old, pre-Acid Tokyo charms, but it's also got the same dawdling pace and the same refusal to explain the necessary details versus all the ancillary stuff.

ART:

CLAMP's art here hasn't changed either, and that mostly is a good thing. We've got the same clean confident linework, the same noodle-like character designs, and the same sorts of action scenes full of beautifully chaotic swirls and tendrils of magic. While this series is still technically shonen, there's a lot more shoujo-esque visual excess here, almost an artifact of their art style of old. They do a lot of layering of panels and staggering long, narrow panels and there's a lot more flowers and sparkles than we've seen in a lot of their modern works. It gets kind of confusing at times, even outside of the action, and it drowns out what beauty is there. I didn't really expect them to shake things up too radically at this point, but I did hope that the new start would let them simplify things a little.

PRESENTATION:

As per usual, we've got a translation notes section. Apparently in addition to the Gate 7& RG Veda cameos, there's a lot of references to Okinawan culture here, so that's kind of novel.

RATING:

Tsubasa World Chronicle is everything you would expect from a Tsubasa sequel. It's got all the charms and beauty it held before, but it also comes with all the nonsensical plot threads and excess that came before. Unless you were really invested in Tsubasa, this can be easily missed.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics. This series is ongoing with 4 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

Let's turn from one of CLAMP's newest works to one of the many weird little short stories. This is one was kind of overshadowed by their biggest works from the 90s, but it remains one of their most charming works.

WISH (Wisshu), by CLAMP. First published in 1995, and first published in North America in 2002.

PLOT:

Shuichiro was walking home from a long surgical shift when he found what looked like a doll with wings getting attacked by crows. He frees this being, who turns out to be an angel named Kohaku. Kohaku wants to reward Shuichiro's good dead with a wish, but he can't think of anything that needs a wish to fix. Regardless, Kohaku is determined to stay by Shuichiro's side until he can decide on that wish. Unfortunately, the forces of both heaven and hell are determined to break up their cozy relationship before it can truly start.

STORY:

Wish feels like the happy medium between CLAMP's larger, more dramatic works and the fluffy bits of nonsense they put out in their early days. It's as light and bubbly as its main character, even once the plot comes barreling in midway.

This is basically a magical girlfriend story, albeit more in the comforting vein of something like Oh! My Goddess than the pervier works that influenced something like Chobits. Kohaku and Shuichiro are a true odd couple, even beyond the fact that they come from different plains of existence. Kohaku is all ditzy optimism and joy in a cloyingly cute package, be it the androgynous full-grown daytime form or the adorable chibi nighttime form. In comparison, Shuichiro is dark, terse, and distant, but shows that his stone-faced appearance hides both a good host and a good man. It's as basic as you can get when it comes to odd couples and the beginnings of a sugary sweet shoujo romance, but sadly the twist to their relationship is literally lost in translation.

You see, angels in this universe are genderless by nature unless they choose to take one or the other. The original Japanese text reflects this, since it allows for gender neutral pronouns and sentence structures that sometimes allow them to be skipped entirely. English is not quite so accommodating, so translator Ray Yoshimoto chose instead to make all the angels in-story female and all the devils male. This might make for a less convoluted translation, but this choice turns an intriguingly queer romance into a more conventional, hetero one.

Just before things get too aimless and treacly, CLAMP does remember that they need to bring in a larger plot. In this case, it's Kohaku remembering that they were sent to find the missing angel master Hisei, a plan that only gets more complicated when it crosses the path of the demon Koryo and his snooping catgirl minions. While it gets a little chaotic at times, it never gets too serious nor too silly to puncture the delicate mood. It's this balance that makes Wish's story work, even if the translation bungles things a little.

ART:

Even compared to older CLAMP works, the character designs here look a little odd. More specically, Shuichiro looks odd even by CLAMP standards. He's got the long, lean & broad-shoulded silhouette of an old-school CLAMP lead, but he's also got a bizarrely triangular head and the harshness is only emphasized by his buzzcut and thick brows. Some have theorized that this and Kohaku's weird haircut are recycled from their takes on Jotaro and Kakyoin in some of their more notorious Jojo's Bizarre Adventure doujin. No one's ever been able to confirm it for certain, but it's a story that lingers to this day.

There's also a lot of chibis, even more so than usual for an older CLAMP work, since Kohaku and Koryu take on chibi forms at different times of the day. Chibi artwork was all the rage in 1990s manga and it's long fallen out of favor. That's a real shame because I've always loved how CLAMP drew theirs and I ADORED its use here. Kohaku in particular is just too cute for words. Otherwise, most of the cast tends towards the wispy, wide-eyed androgynes that are typical of their 90s output. That wispiness extends to all of the art, what with all the wings, fluttering robes, and swirls of flowers, light, and water. All those flowery details mean that the backgrounds take something of a backseat. The only one we get a good look at is Shuichiro's backyard, a lovely and well-tended garden dominated by a beautiful, towering wisteria hedge. Amazingly, this is still kind of restrained for CLAMP. There are no one- or two-page spreads where characters pose dramatically as flowers and feathers explode around them. Still, its airiness fits the story's tone and its heavy use of chibis and possible Jojo's references make it a unique specimen in CLAMP's library.

RATING:

Wish has become something of a forgotten gem, lost in the sea of CLAMP's big 90s hits and mostly left out of their multiverse save for Kobato and Drug & Drop. I'd explain how that works but it would spoil both. Still, it's a real shame because I love its fluffy charms and feel that it deserves to be rediscovered by readers.

This series was published digitally by Viz, and previously by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available. All 4 have been published, but are currently out of print. The series is currently available digitally through Viz.

Speaking of CLAMP's weirder little short stories, let's return to the world of CLAMP School for yet another exercise in frivolousness. This time it's tokusatsu flavored!

CLAMP SCHOOL DEFENDERS DUKLYON (Gakuen Tokkei Dyukarion), by CLAMP. First published in 1992 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

When classmates Kentaro Higashikunimaru and Takeshi Shukaido aren't arguing amongst themselves and engaging in all the frivolities of CLAMP School, they suit up to become the CLAMP School Defenders Duklyon! Together with their easily aggravated team leader Eri, they fight back against the dastardly Imonoyama Shopping District Association and their legion of bizarre monsters!

STORY:

Even by the low standards of the CLAMP School works, this might be one of the goofiest and slightest of the bunch. Much of that is on purpose, but what few jokes it has to offer get old FAST.

The whole thing is one big riff on tokusatsu shows. Even if you never watched anything beyond Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, this much is obvious. That's a perfectly fine conceit, even if the jokes never dig particularly deep. The problem is that there are maybe half a dozen jokes in the entire and every single one of them is hammered firmly into the ground. There are only so many times you can be expected to laugh at how obvious everyone's secret identities are, the manzai-like routine between the boys, or even the villain's big dumb crush on Eri before you just start getting annoyed with each new instance.

There's also another problem: of all the CLAMP School manga, this one crosses over with all of them. Duklyon is commanded by a very poorly disguised Nokuro, leader of the CLAMP School Detectives. The last chapter here is a 2-on-1 battle between the Duklyon boys and Man of Many Faces, which is the phantom thief alter ego of another member of the CLAMP School Detectives. These aren't even cameos! They're basically supporting roles, and without having read those other works their appearances might as well be pointless. When that pointlessness is combined with the annoying humor and half-ass parody, the end result is simply inane.

ART:

Being a CLAMP School-era work, the character designs here are a little rougher than later works. The boys are perfectly cute in CLAMP's typical fashion, but their faces tend to be as stiff as their armor-like Duklyon suits. At least they get off easier than their classmate/villain Kotobuki. He damn near threatens to drown in hair that looks more like a Kabuki wig than hair, even when he's in his ridiculously oversized costume. There's not much in the way of backgrounds, as CLAMP mostly leans on some rather plain screentones. There's also not much in the way of action. All the fights are basically over within a page, maybe two at a stretch. All in all, there's not much here for anyone unless they really enjoy CLAMP's older character designs.

RATING:

CLAMP School Defenders Duklyon is meant to be goofy, but it's simply too lame and too immersed in the CLAMP School universe to be anything other than an annoying curiosity.

This series is digitally published by Viz, and previously by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 2 volumes available. Both volumes were published and are currently out of print. This series is available digitally through Viz.

With the start of a disastrous, fatalistic new presidency, I think it's finally time to take a look at the CLAMP work that best sums up the feelings this new era embodies.

At least this version of the apocalypse has a lot more bishies and far fewer fascists than our own.

X/1999 (Ekkusu),by CLAMP. First published in 1992 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

The year is 1999, and the apocalypse is nigh. The fate of Tokyo and the world rests on the shoulders of a mysterious young man named Kamui. As other, strange folks find themselves drawn to the city, Kamui finds himself among his childhood friends Fuuma and Kotori. They don't know it yet, but all of their lives are about to change.

STORY:

It's hard to look back at X with fresh eyes. Even if you've never read it in your life, you know about the controversy it attracted during its original run and its perpetual lack of ending. Yet even now it's easy to see what drew people to this manga in spite of its melodrama and fatalism. It's ambitious and sweeping in a way that not a lot of 90s manga was, and that shines through even its somewhat shaky beginnings.

Make no mistake: for a shoujo work, X is unusually grim. This is made clear right from the start with the introduction of Kamui. Like a lot of guys in shoujo, he is dark and tormented. The big difference is that unlike those other guys, Kamui has no interest in finding redemption through love. He's got a plan, even if he doesn't feel like sharing it with the rest of us. That's something of a larger problem with the story. Either it's playing EVERYTHING close to its chest and being incredibly cryptic or the plot will stop for a few pages while others explain the rules or the backstory. Meanwhile, CLAMP does lay it on rather thickly how fucked Fuuma and Kotori are. Their lives and their attitudes are just so perfect and sunny that it's almost laughable. Kotori in particular is ridiculously naïve, as she spends most of the volume pining for Kamui while remaining utterly in denial that she's hopelessly smitten with him. These two might as well show pictures of their family to everyone while stating how they only have two days until retirement.

After that, though, it's nothing but backstory. Characters just keep pouring in from the sides, many a monologue is had (along with a few vision and dreams), and sweeping magic battles are had as everyone prattles on about prophecies and apocalypses. It's a lot to keep straight, especially since CLAMP isn't always good about introducing all the newcomers by name. Yet in spite of all those flaws, it's still compelling. For all its faults, CLAMP managed to capture just the right kind of mood and lays down just enough narrative bread crumbs to keep the reader going. For a moment, you feel yourself getting swept up in the drama, and that sort of visceral reaction is X's greatest narrative strength.

ART:

Of course, the real star of the show here is the art. I've often described X as the CLAMPiest work that ever CLAMPed, and it's not a complete exaggeration. X is the pinnacle of CLAMP's old-school style laid in almost Baroque levels of excess. Nowhere is this more evident than in the visions and dream sequences. Mokona goes all out with many a one- or two-page spread, casting Kamui as both angel and devil as he looms giant over a literally shattered world, all as feathers and clockwork float about him. It's all very surreal, but it's also stunning to behold.

It's also very evident in the fights, as the large panels threaten to be swallowed entirely by the massive bursts of magic energy and motion. Even the composition and paneling is dynamic, striking a fine balance between the flow of the story and sheer dramatic effect. The only thing that really needed work at this point were the character designs. They're very much in CLAMP's usual vein, with tall, lanky, angular boys and delicate women that seem to almost swim in their long, flowing hair, but in comparison to the rest of the visuals around them they seem a little plain. Maybe it's the thick linework they use to draw them, but they look a little stiff even as they threaten to drown you in their big, dark, lushly shaded eyes. Still, that's a fairly minor fault in what is already a fantastically dramatic-looking manga.

PRESENTATION:

Viz really went all out with their omnibus rerelease of this series. First and foremost, it's unflipped, unlike the previous single volumes. Secondly, it's printed in a larger format which lets that decadent artwork truly shine. Best of all (at least for me), there are LOADS of color splash pages up front and between every volume. There are even notes from CLAMP in the back explaining where all of those color pieces first appeared, what mediums were used, and a few interesting details about their thought process about making them. They even throw in a color illustration on the spine, a spread of the entire cast that can only be appreciated when all of the volumes are collected and displayed together.

RATING:

X starts off a little obvious and shaky at first, but this is more of a manga to be seen and experienced than to be read. Despite its trouble history, it's earned its place as one of CLAMP's most notable works and one that is still worth experiencing even now.

This series is published by Viz. This series is unfinished in Japan with 18 volumes available. All 18 have been published in both single volume and 3-in-1 omnibus form. The single volumes are out of print; the omnibuses are currently in print.

BIG NEWS FOLKS! I've been debating this for a while now, but after a lot of thought and considering, I finally decided to go forward and create a Patreon to support my work here at The Manga Test Drive along with my other writings.

Check it out here!

In case you are unaware, Patreon is a site where you can directly support the creators you love through regular monthly payments. For as little as $1 a month, you can get convenient access to all of my writings along the potential for even more content if I can meet some of my goals! I'm really excited about this, so if you've ever enjoyed my reviews and articles please consider donating today.

With the return of February comes the return of Bad Romance Month, where we explore just a few of the many, many, MANY messed-up romances found within the pages of manga. Today's review is a bit of an exception. It's not so much of an example of a troubled, abusive romance as it an example of a troubled and tragic one.

SAIKANO: THE LAST LOVE SONG ON THIS LITTLE PLANET (Saishu Heiki Kanojo), by Shin Takahashi. First published in 2000, and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

In a no-name town on Hokkaido, Shuji and Chise are trying to start a relationship. It doesn't go very well at first, as Shuji is taciturn and cross while Chise is apologetic and shy. Then Shuji discovers Chise's secret: she was chosen by the SDF to become The Ultimate Weapon. Progressively, more and more of her body is transformed into a terrible alien machine, used to fight against an unknown enemy. As this is happening, Shuji and Chise struggle to find a way to preserve their fledging love against forces far greater than their own.

STORY:

Saikano is one of those odd little works, the weird sort of cult classics that never quite get popular enough to enter the anime mainstream but remain a sort of touchstone for fans from a particular era. After reading this, I can see why this work would stick in the hearts and minds of others. It only gets grimmer as it goes along, but there's an achingly tender heart and an awareness of the horrors of war that gives it dignity.

That's a good thing because this manga does not get off to a great start. Shuji is too much of an overreactive, grumpy asshole to be born while Chise's tendencies towards weepiness and apologies makes the reader fear she's going to be nothing but a sadsack in a school uniform. Then the story drops its bombshell in more ways than one. It's not just the reveal of Chise's true condition, but also the fact that there seems to be some sort of unspecified war going on, something that actually requires the JSDF to take action. No one ever explains just what's going on, but there are all sorts of ominous signs all around the fringes of the story. It lends not only a darker edge, but also a bit of substance to what is otherwise might be just another sentimental high school love story.

That's a good thing because beyond the war angle and the related sci-fi touches, the romantic parts are all pretty conventional. I do appreciate that Takahashi is honest about the fact that this is a story about teens and that the question of sex is going to come up (pun not intended). Too many manga romances have a hard time getting beyond holding hands or first kisses, so it's nice to see one recognize that there are relationship steps beyond that. Still, as the story goes on the romance becomes less about appreciating the tender moments between the two and more about pounding the tragedy of Shuji and Chise's situation into the reader's head. It becomes oppressive, and I suspect that this is the point that make or break the readers. Either they will eat up every depressing moment or they will find it too much to be believed and mentally check out. It's hard to predict how any given reader might react, but there is enough good here that it's worth it to find out on your own.

ART:

Saikano's art is odd. The linework is fine and delicate, and often full of hatching. At times it seems more like someone's proof instead of a finished, inked work. Even the backgrounds are like this, although wider shots are clearly rotoscoped from reference photos. It's not a bad look, as it matches the sort of fragile emotions within the story. I can't say that much for Takahashi's character designs. The faces are simple but emotive, but his grasp on anatomy gets sketchier the further down the body he gets. The exception to that are the few glimpses we get of Chise's Ultimate Weapon forms. At times it takes an insectoid sort of beauty, but often it looks more like a mad alien mash-up of metal, angles and guns. At times I wondered if Takahashi took some inspiration from Tetsuo: The Iron Man. It's certainly effective enough to make Shuji's horror and wonder at her transformations understandable.

RATING:

Saikano aspires for serious romantic tragedy, and for the large part it succeeds. It gets to be a bit overwhelming by the end, but there's just enough genuine emotion on display here that I can understand why it's still remembered.

This series was published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 7 volumes available. All 7 were published and are currently out of print.

As before, Bad Romance Month is not limited to straight romances alone. That being said, normally yuri was a genre where one could be safe from such things. As much as I might complain about it being nothing but shy schoolgirls in love, that at least is less stressful and uncomfortable than the excesses of BL and old-school shoujo.

Sadly, it seems that those same excesses are starting to bleed in, and on this side of the Pacific this was the work leading the charge.

CITRUS (Shitorasu), by Saburouta. First published in 2012 and first published in North America in 2014.

PLOT:

Yuzu Aihara is dealing with a lot of change lately. Her mother recently remarried, forcing them to move and Yuzu to be transferred to a stuffy all-girls' high school. Her outspokenness and gyaru style put her at odds with her new classmates, especially the cold and severe student council president Mei. Then Yuzu discovers that Mei is her new stepsister and that Mei's life is far more tragic than Yuzu realized. Yuzu wants to help Mei and make her smile, but is she doing so out of sisterly compassion or because she's in love with Mei?

STORY:

Thankfully, Citrus isn't nearly as disturbing as the last yuri series I covered here. While it too is dark and obsessive at times, it hasn't got the malicious, abusive edge that Netsuzou Trap had. That being said, Citrus is still an uncomfortable romance that's more about pushing boundaries than it is about romance.

At least Yuzu isn't so much of a naïf. She may still be innocent and other can (and do) take advantage of that, but she's got enough spirit and empathy for others that she's more than just a wilting violet. She is pro-active, even if she's prone to acting without thinking. What I don't understand is how she (and the reader by extension) are supposed to make the leap from obsession to desire. I can understand why Yuzu would be fascinated by such a troubled girl and her hot-and-cold reactions, but I have a harder time understanding why she (and thus we) are meant to interpret this as true love. That's not even getting into the weird quasi-incestuousness of it all.

Maybe my difficulty with it comes from the fact that Mei herself is a very unlikeable person. In public she's an ice queen, all cold, firm austerity. In private she sneers at Yuzu's compassion and efforts at friendliness, even as she uses kisses and even the threat of sexual assault to shut her up. She's clearly an emotionally damaged person whose birth family have given her no firm grounding for things like affection, but she was simply far too negative in her approach to others to me to like her and feel sorry for her. If anything, she's a pile of emotional red flags that Yuzu should be treating cautiously because it's clear that her emotional issues (especially with her perpetually missing father and her stern grandfather) run deep and won't be satisfied until Yuzu hurts just as much as she does.

Now there's nothing wrong with writing a story about a troubled romance, but as always, it's all about intent. It would be one thing if Citrus was merely spectating on the ups and downs of Yuzu and Mei's relationship. It's quite another when its paints this as the troubled prelude to a real-deal romance. That's a tactic taken straight from the worst parts of both shoujo and BL, and it's one that I personally cannot enjoy nor condone. Abuse and manipulation isn't sexy. Abuse and manipulation isn't romantic. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all Citrus has to offer.

ART:

At least the artwork isn't bad. The character designs are cute, even if some of the supporting cast looks rather goofy and Saburouta clearly isn't comfortable drawing men in the least. There isn't a lot of cheesecake to be found here, but what little there is becomes more sleezy than alluring thanks to the context of the story. This is evident even in the cover art. It lures you in the with promise of cute girls, but any sexiness it might promise is punctured by the distress and embarrassment on Yuzu's face. Sadly, their paneling feels downright chaotic at times. They take every opportunity to shove Mei & Yuzu together in-frame, and when combined with the intense close-ups the end result is visual chaos. I don't know why they lean so much on close-ups because the backgrounds and other setting details are drawn quite well. Overall, it's not unpleasant art, but Saburouta simply can't or won't take the best advantage of what good qualities they have as an artist.

PRESENTATION:

There are a number of comical omakes featuring the two leads as well as some of the supporting cast. They're all perfectly fine in their own right, but coming off the rather intense, dramatic ending it comes off as a bit of tonal whiplash. There's also a random preview of Alice in the Country of Clover: Knight's Knowledge. This is not only a weird pairing, but it's also pretty meh-looking on its own (like so many of those Alice spinoffs).

RATING:

Citrus might not be the worst yuri out there, but its particular brand of obsessive passion and drama simply isn't my style and it's one that doesn't do the genre credit. Can't we get some variety without making it skeezy?

This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is ongoing in Japan with 5 volumes published. All 5 are available and currently in print.

Of course, I can't let this month pass without covering some strange example of BL manga, and this year I found a doozy. Tokyopop's BL imprint was actually fairly sedate compared to some of its competitors, but they still managed to slip some real oddballs out there like this little anthology.

MAN'S BEST FRIEND: INU MO ARUKEBA, by Kazusa Takashima. First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

Ukyo happens to find a stray dog on his way home from school one day. He just presumes that the dog, whom he names Kuro, is just a friendly canine. He could have never suspected that Kuro was in love with him, nor that when he gets excited that Kuro can turn into a man and start humping more than just his leg. There's also the story of two childhood friends who reunite as young men who must come to terms with their shared past, as well as the story of a man who wins a goldfish at a festival only to find that it too can turn into a beautiful young man.

STORY:

You wouldn't think that I could be shocked by vaguely bestial BL after the bizarreness that was Love Pistols. Yet here I am, looking at an anthology with not one, but TWO stories about guys having sex with their transformed pets, with a far more blander, conventional bit of filler between the two.

The title story takes up half of the anthology, and beyond the premise of 'dog humps man' it's clear that Takashima didn't have many ideas about where to go with it. She knows how to set it up well enough, and the scenes where Ukyo and Kuro interact just as a boy and his dog are genuinely sweet. Then she makes the big reveal (in more ways than one) and everything goes south from there. It's weird enough that she expects the reader to just roll with the notion that Kuro is able to talk and transform because of magic or wishes or whatever. It's quite another thing to them to turn around and almost immediately have sex. No matter how attractively she might draw these men, no matter how tenderly she tries to frame these scenes and those that follow, we are still watching a man have sex with his dog. He might look like a man, but even in human form Kuro thinks like a dog. This may not be bestiality, but frankly it skirts the line too closely for my comfort.

Then to make matters worse, she does it again! The final story, "Princess Goldfish," is even more slight and baffling as a story. A young man wins a goldfish at a festival, it turns into a long-haired androgynous boy when he gets home, and the man basically shrugs his shoulders about the whole thing and proceeds to have sex with it. That's it. In comparison to them both, the middle story "Summer's Here Again" is more substantial and far less bizarre. It's about Ken and Kasumi, who discover after been separated for over a decade that the two love each other. Well, that and Ken figures out pretty fast that Kasumi was in fact a boy all along, despite his childhood misapprehensions. These sorts of stories are fairly rote for BL, but Takashima avoids the melodramatics and keeps the focus quite firmly on the boys' slowly shifting, clarifying emotions. It's not badly done in the least, but putting it in a story collection like this overshadows the good qualities and leaves only the most sensational and weird parts on display.

ART:

I wonder how many readers were willing to overlook the weirdness of these stories just to appreciate the art. I can't entirely blame them, as Takashima is clearly a cut above the crowd. It's not just that she's got a decent grasp on human anatomy, but that everyone has these large, naturalistically-drawn eyes that draw the reader's attention. They go a long way towards giving the characters' otherwise ordinary faces some depth of emotion. Speaking of anatomy, those looking for hardcore smut will likely be disappointed in this. Takashima does not linger on the sex scenes, and she censors them discreetly, even artfully through her use of framing or placement of limbs. One thing she does draw quite well are dogs. Kuro's canine form is nothing short of adorable, and she uses lots of wacky expressions and movement to great comedic effect during his scenes. That being said, her page layout is rather freeform at times and this can make it hard to follow the progression of panels. She's also not big on backgrounds, often just leaving it at a bit of screentone or a few lightly placed screen effects.

PRESENTATION:

Tokyopop did something here that I wish more BL publishers would do: extras! In this case, they include a surprisingly long interview with Takeshima. It's clearly copied from a Japanese magazine, as they not only translated it but also replaced the chaotic layout that seems to be so common to so many Japanese magazines. It talks a bit about her inspirations as well as her characters here as well as in another Tokyopop-licensed work of hers, Wild Rock. There's also a gallery of rough sketches of the characters here, along with the usual omake comments from the author.

RATING:

Takashima is a fairly talented artist, but this collection's focus on quasi-bestiality overshadows her deft hand at drama and sincerity. It's better than average for a BL anthology, but not enough to deem it a classic worth hunting down.

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

Well, let's wrap things up with a bit of smutty josei. Today's title was one of the first josei titles to sneak its way over here in some time and moderately successful. Too bad that it's also just another variation on the same old romance novel crap, right down to the vampires.

MIDNIGHT SECRETARY (Middonaito Sekuretari), by Tomu Ohmi. First published in 2006 and first published in 2013.

PLOT:

Kaya Satozuka is a brilliant secretary, and she's determined to prove just that to her new boss, the department store director Kyohei Tohma. Sure, he's rude, dismissive, keeps odd hours, and keeps bringing women into the office late at night for sex, but Kaya works hard to overcome her distaste for her boss and perform at her best. Then she discovers that Kyohei's late night trysts are in fact late night feedings. Her boss is a vampire, and only Kaya and Kyohei's brother know the truth. Now Kaya must not only keep her office running smoothly but also keep her boss's secret. What will happen though when warmer feelings start to interfere with her duties?

STORY:

It cannot be overstated: Midnight Secretary was a risk for Viz. Josei had (at that point) a troubled and largely unsuccessful history here, so it's little wonder that they slipped this smutty josei series in under their Shoujo Beat line. I can see why it worked where so many others failed, as it's basically a Harlequin novel in manga form. Hell, it's more of a Harlequin novel than many of those actual, literal Harlequin manga adaptations that clutter up so many digital storefronts! The downside to that is that this means that Midnight Secretary comes with all the flaws and foibles that are part of that legacy.

Kaya does have a quiet strength to her that I do admire. She's a dedicated worker, extremely efficient, and until the end of the volume good at keeping her personal issues interfere with her job. Sometimes she will even go above and beyond her duties all to win small victories against Kyohei and others, all while never cracking more than a polite smile in public. Beyond this, though, she's got all the informed flaws of an old-school romance novel heroine. Oh no! Kaya has to wear reading glasses and a bun because otherwise she would look too youthful and cutesy to be taken seriously! She's forced to suffer through evenings at fine restaurants and plush holiday parties with her boss! Truly heavy is her lot in life. Sadly, all that resolve seems to dribble away by volume's end, as she finds herself longing for his kisses, getting distracted with thoughts of him, and generally acting like a lovesick ninny. Still, she's got too much dignity as a character to merit being attached to a jackass like Kyohei.

Kyohei is in many ways your standard alpha-male romantic lead, the sort that romance novels have been peddling for literally decades. The allure of his position, wealth, and generic good-looks are entirely skin-deep, since as a person he's rude, dismissive, selfish, and only gets his way in the business world through intimidation and the occasional bit of industrial espionage. He rejects any and all attempts at comfort or sympathy from both Kaya and his attentive older brother. Based on his reaction to Kaya's conversations with said brother, he's a jealous bastard to boot. He's such a thoroughly unpleasant person that it's absolutely unfair that he barely has to struggle at being a vampire in the modern world.

In this universe, vampires get all the benefits of vampirism with practically none of the traditional downsides. At most, Kyohei has a mild sensitivity to sunlight and objects of faith. Otherwise, he has no weakness to other, more traditional banes of vampires such as garlic or silver, has a reflection, and his bites don't even leave so much as a mark. Meanwhile, he gets to enjoy the eternal youth, wealth, influence, and seductiveness that seemingly come standard with vampires in modern vampire fiction. You honestly have to wonder why Kyohei has to go so far as to threaten Kaya with blackmail to keep his secret when he barely has anything to conceal in the first place. Oh, did I forget to mention that he threatens to fire Kaya's saleswoman mother unless she keeps his secret? Yeah, he's a real charmer like that. Despite all this, he's the one who lets Kaya's hair down, dresses her up like a doll, and inevitably falls for her because her ~~vagina~~ blood is the only sort than can satisfy him any more. Kyohei is a giant pile of regressive romantic clichés that couldn't be less appealing if Ohmi tried.

Coming into this, I feared that Midnight Secretary would be nothing but a trashy, regressive nightmare of a romance. On that front I was partially correct. Kaya isn't as much of a pushover as heroine of this sort tend to be, but Kyohei is more than enough of a jerk to make up for that and the romance between them is precisely as forced and clichéd as expected.

ART:

Ohmu's art is surprisingly cutesy for what's meant to be a josei book. It certainly helps it to blend with the rest of the Shoujo Beat line, but it feels almost at odds with the tone of the book. While most of the women in-story are drawn in a generically cute and bedroom-eyed way, Kaya stands out because she's drawn like a damn children's doll. She's got these huge, glittering eyes, a tiny pout of a mouth, and dark flowing hair that all but begs to be pulled from its tight bun for dramatic effect. In comparison, the guys are built along the same leering, broad-shouldered, square-jawed lines, complete with bangs falling ever so artfully over their eyes.

For something that's marketed as sensual, there's not a lot of actual sex on the page. At most, the sensuality involves a lot of sprawling limbs with the occasional peek of bra or bared breast. Meanwhile, everything from the backgrounds to the composition is quite plain. The craziest Ohmi gets is when she breaks out the Dutch angles in her panels. Otherwise, she keeps her focus entirely on her leads.

RATING:

Kaya might have more backbone than I expected, but backbone alone is not enough to save Midnight Secretary from its horrendously clichéd narrative and its overwhelming douchebag of a love interest. You'd be better off saving your money for actual romance novels than spending your money on this.

This series is published by Viz. This series is complete in Japan with 7 volumes available. All volumes have been published and are currently in print.

In honor of the release of the Nintendo Switch, I'm making this a month of video game manga! Video games and manga are not a radical nor recent combination. Indeed, today's review covers a beloved adaptation of an equally beloved Nintendo franchise from an equally beloved Nintendo magazine.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST (Zelda no Densetsu), by Shotaru Ishinomori. First published in North America in 1992.

PLOT:

On a dark and stormy night, Link is roused from a sound sleep by a strange voice calling him to the king's castle. There he finds the Princess Zelda under attack from the evil sorcerer Agahnim. He wants to use Zelda's life force to summon Ganon and thus take over the world. In order to save Zelda, Link must find a legendary sword and traverse all the dangers of both his own world and the Dark World where Zelda is being held.

STORY:

Unlike the more recent and better-known Zelda manga, Ishinomori's take on A Link To the Past is an odd duck in many ways. It's not quite a true adaptation, as Ishinomori takes a number of liberties with the original story. It's not quite a true manga, as it was first published in North America and brought over to Japan only after it finished its original English language run in Nintendo Power. Yet it's weird and charming enough that I can understand why fans would have remembered it decades later.

Just because you've played A Link to the Past (or any other Zelda game, for that matter) does not mean you know everything that goes on here. Ishinomori went out of his way to make changes to the plot so that (in his own words) "preserve the elements of surprise and add to the dramatic flow." That becomes obvious almost right away. He does preserve the broad strokes of the main plot along with a number of main and supporting characters, but he also scrambles up other details, condenses the plot heavily, and adds in a lot of his own boss monsters and supporting characters. Ishinomori's works tend to be rather action-heavy, and this manga is no exception to that rule. Link bounces from one action set-piece to the next with only the briefest of narrative breaks between them. This was probably less on an issue when it was originally serialized, but in one single collection it can get a little exhausting at points. He even slips in some references to his own original works, as the bird-man warrior Roan will seem awfully familiar to those who have read or seen Cyborg 009.

Since the story is so condensed, there's not a lot of room for nuanced character writing. That's not to say that there isn't any character to be found here. Indeed, Ishinomori's version of Link has a sort of goofiness that comes out in lighter moments that goes a long way towards giving the story levity. You have to remember that in this pre-Ocarina of Time work, Link's backstory and personality hadn't been set in stone, so Ishinomori had more freedom to do what he wished with the character. He's also good at giving Link's many allies some sense of personality, however fleeing their actual appearances may be. Zelda admittedly spends much of the story off-screen in a coma, but her psychic dialogues with Link help to keep her present in some sense. She also gets to be involved in Ganon's defeat that I wish more of the actual Zelda games would employ. Sadly, her best character moment is in the very end, where she and Link share a surprisingly somber, even bittersweet moment.

It's moments like that justify this manga's existence and make it memorable. Ishinomori took what was likely meant to be a quick little commercial tie-in and put his own mark on it. In the process, he created a work that manages to feel true to the spirit of the original game but distinct enough to stand on its own.

ART:

Choosing a mangaka like Shotaro Ishinomori was an interesting choice on Nintendo's part. Ishinomori's artstyle never really evolved beyond the 1960s, so even by 1992 standards this manga looks very old-fashioned. I wonder if they thought that the rounded, Tezuka-esque character designs and big goofy expressions that so often define his work would appeal to children. The irony is that by going with such a old-fashioned artist, this comic feels timeless instead of a product of its time. They certainly stand in contrast to the beautiful backgrounds on display here. Ishinomori's take on the land of Hyrule is one defined by bright, bold washes of primary colors, lovingly rendered chipped and craggy rock faces, and bursts of magic, water, and explosions that seem to spatter right off the page. I don't know how good they would have looked in the original run in Nintendo Power, but they positively shine thanks to both Ishinomori's simple yet skillful composition as well as Viz's choice to publish it in such an large format on such high-quality paper. The presentation alone makes this volume worth a look, even if you've never played a Zelda game in your life.

RATING:

Ishinomori's take on A Link To the Past isn't a replacement for the game, but it more than justifies its existence thanks to his own original takes on the world of Link as well as his beautiful, confident, and easy-to-follow art. It's a legendary work in its own right, able to stand alongside both the OTHER Zelda manga as well as the original games.

This book is published by Viz. It is currently in print.

Now we shift from a classic, kid-friendly franchise to a far more recent, far more violent, far more saucy and (surprisingly) far more boring one.

SENRAN KAGURA: SKIRTING SHADOWS (Senran Kagura: Shoujo-tachi no Shinei), adapted from the video game by Kenichiro Takagi & art by Amami Takatsume. First published in 2012 and first published in North America in 2013.

PLOT:

For generations, Hanzo National Academy has served to prepare young ladies to become deadly ninjas. Nowadays these future warriors may wear short skirts instead of identity-concealing uniforms and fight for the government instead of feudal lords, but they are still committed to defending the nation in the name of justice and striking down the forces of their dastardly rivals at Hebijo Clandestine Girls' Academy. That doesn't mean that there isn't time along the way for friendship, trips to the beach, family issues, and lots and lots of bouncing boobs.

STORY:

I wasn't expecting much out of this one. After all, it's based on a franchise that was literally created only because the developer wanted to bring Dead or Alive-style boob physics to the 3DS in the form of an ecchi-filled ninja girl brawler. This is not a franchise with a deep and complex lore. Hell, most of the girls here could be summed up with a single quirk. Some of them are the kind of quirks you expect from these kinds of stories: the moe baby, the prim and proper rich girl, and the blandly nice protagonist. Then there are some that are pervier, such as the girl obsessed with boobs (not girls, mind you, just boobs) and a sadist girl. Then there are just the weird ones, like the girl obsessed with bean sprouts or the gothloli who springs giant guns out from under her skirts. They all have names, of course, but they're just as forgettable as the girls attached to them.

As for the story proper...well, there isn't one. At least, there isn't any sort of major, continuous plot thread. Surely the game this is based on has one! Instead, it's just a bunch of scattershot, slice-of-life vignettes, each more unoriginal and inoffensive than the last. That's right - the series that's marketed entirely around bouncing boobs and punching your opponents' clothes off has a manga that's surprising chaste. Yeah, there are boob gropes and panty shots, but they are so infrequent that it barely registers. As a result, the whole boobs just kind of drifts by without making much of an impression on the reader. It's not outrageous, it's not funny, it's not sexy, it's just there.

ART:

Naturally, most people don't read these sorts of manga for the story, but instead for the cute girls and fanservice. If so, then the joke's on them here because the artwork here is positively lazy. Takatsume turns these mostly ridiculous, bouncy character designs and renders them in the plainest, stiffest (and occasionally off-model) manner possible. He can't draw a fight to save his life, relying mostly on head shots and speed lines to hide his limitations. He doesn't add much in the way of fanservice, but what is present has all the charm and sexiness of a tuna-fish sandwich. Even his paneling is sloppy and confusing. The artist's note at the end notes that they were a newcomer to professional manga when they made this, and every page makes it evident that they were simply not ready for primetime.

RATING:

There are countless other manga out there about sexy girls fighting one another, so save yourself some time and don't bother with this lazy cash-in of a series.

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

Even by the standards of most video-game themed manga, today's review is an odd one. It's written by a American woman, drawn by a hentai artist, and is all about anthropomorphizing a console war that largely only existed in the West, yet got published as a web manga and brought back over here.

It's just a shame that it really, REALLY wasn't worth all the effort.

WORLD WAR BLUE (Aoi Sekai no Chushin de), written by Anastasia Shestakova with art by Crimson. First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2012.

PLOT:

In the land of Consume, the Niltendo Empire has conquered all the kingdoms save one: the Segua Kingdom. There lives a young orphan named Gear, a young man possessing oddly blue hair and super speed. When Niltendo forces kill his best friend, he and his other childhood friend Nel set forth to join the Segua Army. Together with skilled archer Opal and the pervy yet brilliant strategist Tejirov, they represent Segua's greatest hope towards rescuing their commander Alex and taking down Niltendo once and for all.

STORY:

Ok, who let someone turn their video game fanfiction into a manga? I joke, but that's basically what World War Blue is. It's a fanfic of the 90s console wars written by someone who has both read too much bad shonen manga and is a massive Sega fangirl, and it's just as proud of itself and amateurish as that description would lead you to believe.

The story onto itself is about as generic as you can get when it comes to a shonen series. It follows the hero's journey formula note for note. It starts with a plucky young lead who is motivated by the death of a loved one, joins a crew of ragtag warriors that he inevitably wins over through his infallible good heart, and sets forth to battle against a vague but wicked ruler. It's like someone threw all of these tropes in a blender along with a few copies of Sega Visions until it turned into grey, pulpy goo, then molded that into a manga. That would also include a volume or two of Dragon Ball Z as well, as there's more than one instance where a character gets a super-special glowy power-up by concentrating real hard and screaming. The only original idea to be found here is the video game conceit, and even that's got problems.

I have to wonder how well this went over with Japanese audiences considering that it's referencing a rivalry that didn't exist on their side of the ocean. While Sega and Nintendo were serious rivals in the West during the early 1990s, in Japan things were very different. There, the Sega Mega Drive (aka the Genesis) was soundly beaten by both the SuperFamicon (aka the SNES) and even the NEC PC Engine (aka the Turbografx-16). Maybe they were just amused by all the references to real-world studios and games. The kingdoms are all named for studios, while all the named cast members are references to games from that era. Some of them are more obscure than others, especially to people who didn't grow up in the eras of the Genesis and Master System. It would be easy for most people to guess that Gear is an expy of Sonic or who the mustachioed, red-clad Emperor Marcus represents, but how many are going to connect Opal to Fantasy Zone or magic-wielding Nel to Phantasy Star 2?

The references tread a fine line between clever and stupid, often switching sides on a whim. A better writer might have incorporated these references more smoothly, but Shestakova is no more elegant at that than she is at writing shonen fantasy. She's also got a lousy sense of humor, which is a real problem in a story this goofy. The best she can manage are some lame sex jokes; otherwise, she treats everything with deadly seriousness, which is absolutely the wrong approach to a fantasy about video game companies fighting one another.

It's a bad sign that while reading this, I almost longed for the relative quality of Hyperdimension Neptunia. It's a much later franchise based on a much later console war that's both obnoxiously meta and pandering as all hell, but compared to this clumsy excuse of a story it's positively clever. It handles its references more deftly and forges its own metatextual path instead of just aping a well-worn formula badly. I would sooner play all of those games (including the idol management spin-off one) than read another volume of World War Blue.

ART:

Crimson is an artist mostly known for doing hentai doujin. I was vaguely aware of him thanks to fellow IDR writer Jonathan, whose knowledge of hentai manga is vast and is himself a fan of Crimson's. Sadly, the skills to make good hentai manga art are not the same as those needed to make good shonen art because the artwork here is decidedly mediocre. The character designs certainly leave something wanting. He's got a good grasp on anatomy, but he tends to draw the same face on everyone, especially the women, and he's not so good with facial expressions. The best of the lot is probably Gear, as his blue hair and beady eyes still work within this universe visually but also make it just obvious enough to figure out what character he's meant to represent. He also clearly isn't comfortable with drawing action, a major flaw for what is meant to be an action piece. He tends to either skip over them entirely or sum it up in a few stiffly drawn panels before moving on. He tries to make up for this through use of digital blurring to communicate Gear's power and speed. It's an effective trick early on, but by the midway point it's clear that this is Crimson's ONLY trick.

He doesn't bring much visual flare to the world of the Segua Kingdom, either. The backgrounds and costumes alike are plain as they can be. This isn't helped by the fact that nothing is shaded, so every image looks as flat as the paper it's printed on. During fights, they fade out entirely and are replaced with a series of speed lines. Even the paneling is workmanlike. Good artwork might have helped sell this half-baked fantasy, but Crimson is simply not up to the task.

PRESENTATION:

Even if you're not familiar with this era of gaming, you'll get the references thanks to a series of comical conversations that go more into the history of Sega. They take a while to get to the point, but get the job done.

RATING:

World War Blue is too serious, too amateurish, and too plain for its own good. Its combination of hamfisted Sega references and half-assed shonen formula are embarrassing to behold. There's Sonic the Hedgehog mpreg fanfiction out there that's more dignified than this. In short, this series is Game Over right from the start.

This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is complete in Japan with 10 volumes available. 8 volumes are available and are currently in print.

Admittedly, one of the hard parts of picking out titles for this month was finding works that I was familiar enough with the game to judge fairly. Thankfully, that's not a problem with today's review. It's part of one of my favorite video game franchises, but can it stand proudly with the games that spawned it or is it guilty of adaptation failure?

PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE ATTORNEY (Gyakuten Saiban), written by Kenji Kuroda & art by Kazuo Maekawa. First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2011.

PLOT:

Phoenix Wright is an up-and-coming defense attorney. With his assistant Maya Fey at his side, he's determined to bring justice to his clients, be it his perpetually unlucky in love pal Larry Butz or a wealthy family with a lot of secrets, a lot of spiders, and a potential murder.

STORY:

It's trickier than you would think to write a good Ace Attorney story. Shu Takemi set a pretty high standard with the original trilogy of games, and coming up with stories that both fit in the canon and capture the game's particular style of humor and particular brand of plot twists is quite the feat. So I will give Kenji Kuroda the credit he deserves for pulling it off. There's only two stories in this first volume (well...technically one and a half) but they feel perfectly at home in the Ace Attorney universe. If anything, they might feel a little TOO close. I had to check more than once that these were in fact original stories and not adaptations of cases from the games that I had somehow forgotten. Maybe that was just because the first story hewed to the game formula so thoroughly. The second one fares much better, as it's more of an investigation that slowly shifts into a closed-room-style mystery. It's neat, if not a little silly at times, but that's normal for Phoenix Wright.

There's not much to say for what few regular cast members show up because the story relies on you already knowing them from the games. As such, very little time is spent on introductions and what little character shines through in them is mostly schtick. The original characters fare a little better out of sheer necessity, although none of them particularly stand out. I can live with that, though. The individual elements here aren't necessarily so remarkable, but they add up for a very satisfying whole that should please both fans and newcomers alike.

ART:

Maekawa's art doesn't stray much from the original games' designs save for the faces. This is most obvious on Phoenix and Maya. They've both been weirdly simplified that works well for big, goony reactions, but not so much for more neutral expressions. Otherwise, every other returning character looks fine. The new characters visually fit in fine, even if the less comically exaggerated ones tend to have the same face. The only other notable bit of visual flare is with Maekawa's use of screen effects. He's good at using just the right amount of screentone, speed lines, and other such effects to visually convey the drama of a confession or Phoenix's inevitable cry of "OBJECTION!" He obviously can't recreate things like the games' excellent and iconic music cues, so this is the next best thing.

PRESENTATION:

Nothing but the usual translation notes and preview of the next volume. This was a common feature in the Del Ray days, so it's a little nostalgic to see it in a book made after Kodansha took over.

RATING:

The Ace Attorney manga isn't an adaptation of the games, but instead a series of enjoyable side stories that fit reasonably well within that universe both in tone and in visuals that both fans and newcomers alike can enjoy.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics. This series is complete in Japan with 5 volumes available. All 5 have been published and are currently in print.

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