Manga and Book Reviews by Michelle Smith
I reviewed the omnibus edition of this shoujo manga based on the Darker Than Black anime for Comics Should Be Good. Basically, all of the elements borrowed from the anime are pretty intriguing, but the manga’s storyline just doesn’t hang together very well.
You can find that review here.
Darker Than Black is published in English by Yen Press in a 384-page omnibus edition that contains both volumes of the series.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
From the back cover:
After orphan Teru Kurebayashi loses her beloved older brother, she finds solace in the messages she exchanges with DAISY, an enigmatic figure who can only be reached through the cell phone her brother left her. Meanwhile, mysterious Tasuku Kurosaki always seems to be around whenever Teru needs help. Could DAISY be a lot closer than Teru thinks?
One day at school, Teru accidentally breaks a window and agrees to pay for it by helping Kurosaki with chores around school. Kurosaki is an impossible taskmaster, though, and he also seems to be hiding something important from Teru…
Review:
Dengeki Daisy, from the creator of the charming Beast Master, is the latest series to debut under VIZ’s Shojo Beat imprint. It’s the story of orphan Teru Kurebayashi, whose older brother recently passed away, but not before giving her a cell phone that will enable her to contact “Daisy,” who will always be there to protect Teru in her brother’s place.
Due to her status as a scholarship student, Teru faces bullying at school, but pretends like everything is fine when text messaging Daisy. Little does she know that Tasuku Kurosaki, the delinquent school custodian, is actually Daisy and has been watching over her all this time. When Teru accidentally breaks a window at school, Kurosaki uses it as an excuse to keep an eye on her while he plays mahjong on his laptop and she does all the work.
There are definitely some familiar elements to this story. You’ve got the impoverished heroine being called a pauper, the all-powerful student council, and the somewhat-jerky-but-really-kind male lead. What makes Dengeki Daisy stand out from the pack are the original twists Kyousuke Motomi employs. Student-teacher romances are fairly common, but I’ve never seen a student-custodian one before. I like that Kurosaki is in love, but Teru is oblivious (though she does suspect right away that he might be Daisy, which he denies). And I genuinely like the characters and the way they interact, especially Teru’s group of misfit friends and the scene in which Kurosaki wields an edger as a weapon!
I really don’t have any complaints about this volume—it’s light, cute fun—but I can see how Kurosaki’s protectiveness and occasional dispeasure with Teru’s actions could possibly be viewed as patronizing. It honestly didn’t come across this way to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others took issue with it.
All in all, I really enjoyed this debut and am looking forward to continuing the series. Thanks, VIZ, for bringing us something else from this talented mangaka!
Volume one of Dengeki Daisy is available now. The series is still ongoing in Japan—volume seven will be coming out there in a couple of weeks.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
Cut for spoilers!
From the back cover:
Hachi tells herself that she’s got her eye on the future and her life with Takumi, but she just can’t let go of the past and her friendship with Nana and the rest of Blast—especially Nobu. And the tangle gets thicker when Hachi’s wedding has to be postponed in favor of Nana and Ren’s nuptials. Can Hachi handle another delay in her happily-ever-after?
Review:
Oh, NANA. So good and yet so depressing.
Volume eleven left off with a hopeful/hopeless cliffhanger—Hachi had invited Blast to attend a fireworks festival and they’re all gathered in the girls’ old apartment, waiting for her. Hachi, meanwhile, is broken down in tears because she’s just encountered Shoji and has realized that she has truly lost him forever. Can she now face Nobu knowing the same thing?
Volume twelve begins not with a direct followup, but with a similar gathering six or seven years in the future. None of the old pain has been resolved—Nobu and Hachi still have a palpable connection and chemistry—and Nana is welcome, wished-for, but absent. After this glimpse at what will be, we return to the night of the fireworks festival and to some very selfish actions by Nana.
She has been trying to reconcile herself that Nobu isn’t going to be the glue that keeps her and Hachi together, and even trying to be supportive of his flirtations with a couple of residents of the agency dorm where the band is now living, but just as soon as she gets an inkling that Hachi isn’t over Nobu, she goes into a desperate sort of auto-pilot. She lies to Hachi, saying Nobu didn’t come, and arranges so that Nobu is alone in the apartment to greet Hachi when she arrives. Nobu, though, is too decent a guy to jeopardize Hachi’s happiness and doesn’t answer the door.
Meanwhile, plans for Nana and Ren’s wedding proceed, and it’s made into a huge publicity deal by their agencies, including a press conference on the day that both bands release new singles. The expectations everyone has for this match are horribly weighty. Takumi (and Yasu, too) think that Nana is going to be able to keep Ren from sliding further into drug addiction. Hachi thinks theirs is the dreamiest love story ever and is sure that Nana is in “total bliss” right now.
As for Nana, she’s completely terrified, but still hopeful that marrying will make her feel more stable. Not realizing, of course, that Ren is as much of a wreck as she is, if not more so. Shin points out at one point that no one at a band/agency meeting is discussing the impending wedding like it’s a good thing, but there’s just such an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding that it’s certainly doomed to failure.
In Hachi’s world, thanks to some clever scheming from Reira, Takumi has realized that it just wouldn’t do for two of Trapnest’s eligible bachelors to get married at the same time, so his and Hachi’s nuptuals are on hold indefinitely. She tries to keep upbeat about this, and doesn’t waver in her commitment to sticking it out with him, but even she is honest. “Even though we can construct our little world, I don’t think it can grow.”
The volume concludes with all of the main characters about to meet up again at a joint birthday party for Shin and Reira. I expect many revelations and much pain will ensue, including, perhaps, incontrovertible evidence that Takumi is a cheating bastard, that Nobu has a heart of gold, and that nobody in this story ever really has any chance of being happy.
And yet, for all of the pain and misery, NANA is still simply amazing. I am desperate to read volume thirteen, and yet simultaneously dread it because it will surely hurt. A story capable of hurting you, though, is a story worth treasuring.
I’ve always been intrigued by Ash Lynx, the lead character in Banana Fish, but suddenly I feel like I understand him so much better after reading these two volumes.
We begin with Ash and friends still in Los Angeles at the home of Dr. Alexis Dawson, one of the creators of Banana Fish. When Ash and Max are drawn away by a threat against Max’s family, Chinese mafia member Yut-Lung exorcises his influence over Ash’s friend, Shorter, and kidnaps Eiji, taking him back to New York to become Papa Golzine’s new plaything. Of course, the beautiful Yut-Lung is immediately turned into a tool by his own brother, who sends him as a gift for Golzine with the expectation that he’ll also act as spy.
Ash is captured soon thereafter—though not before Alexis Dawson can conveniently return and explain all about the origins of Banana Fish—and everyone reunites at Golzine’s mansion, where the true capabilities of the drug are demonstrated when Shorter, under the influence of Banana Fish, is compelled to attack Eiji, which in turn causes Ash to kill one friend to save another. Yut-Lung, once he sees how horrible Banana Fish truly is, helps Ash escape, leading to an incredibly awesome sequence where Ash raids the armory, gets Eiji and the others to safety, then returns for Shorter’s body and vengeance upon Dr. Abraham Dawson.
There’s really a ton of plot in these two volumes but what stands out to me the most are some amazing scenes involving Ash. I love, for example, how he cries over Shorter’s fate and in sympathy for what’s happening (or going to happen) to those he cares about. It really shows that, though he’s tough and brilliant, and has suffered and been mistreated, he’s not too damaged to love others. I love that so much of what he feels for Eiji is conveyed in simple looks, because there’s not enough time for words. I love that he looks a little confused that Eiji values him so much. And I love how he ignores the pleading of Abraham Dawson and simply empties his gun into the man who is, in a way, ultimately responsible for much of the misery that is Ash’s life.
It’s pretty impressive that Yoshida is not only able to show more facets of her lead character, but also move the plot along significantly, resolving the mystery of Banana Fish, setting up some of its possible ramifications, and blowing wide the scope of the story by showing that the White House and the US military are in cahoots with Papa Golzine.
It seems that the story is going to get a lot bigger than I was expecting—Ash versus the government?—but like his gang, with whom he’s finally reunited, I have faith that he’s going to survive, one way or another.
Much as with Natsuki Takaya’s Tsubasa: Those with Wings, I had been looking forward to the English release of Portrait of M & N by Tachibana Higuchi only because I enjoy later work, Gakuen Alice. Aaaand, much as with Tsubasa: Those with Wings, I ended up somewhat disappointed.
Portrait of M & N is a love story starring a beautiful girl named Mitsuru Abe and a handsome boy named Natsuhiko Amakusa. Matters are complicated, however, because each character harbors an embarrassing secret: Mitsuru is a masochist (or M) and Natsuhiko is a narcissist (or N). Ostensibly, these conditions developed as a result of the way they were treated by their parents—the most attention Mitsuru received from her mother was when she was being punished, while sickly Natsuhiko was forbidden to go outside and play with other kids, and thus developed a fixation for his own reflection.
Both Mitsuru and Natsuhiko are hoping for a normal, peaceful high school life, and things seem to be off to a good start because their good looks have attracted positive notice from their classmates. That is, until Mitsuru’s masochistic tendencies are triggered in Natsuhiko’s presence. It’s almost as if she has a split personality: when she is hit in the face, she suddenly becomes aggressively submissive, offering anybody who happens to be nearby the chance to do whatever they want to her. Against his better judgment, Natsuhiko becomes friends with Mitsuru and attempts to protect her whenever she goes into M mode, and thus reveals his own secret to her, one that turns him into a tearful, blushing fool whenever he catches sight of himself in a mirror.
If you’re looking for an accurate, sensitive portrayal of masochism or narcissism, you’re not going to find it here. This is a comedy, after all, and Higuchi seemingly delights in inventing ridiculous situations for the characters to endure—like a mandatory game of dodgeball, for example. A third character, Hijiri, enters the mix in toward the end of the first volume and, realizing Mitsuru’s secret pretty quickly, uses it to extract her cooperation in protecting him from a particular dog (he has a secret phobia of his own) on his way to and from school. Mitsuru’s closeness with two of the hottest guys in school does not go over well with the other girls, who treat her very poorly. These are the most tiresome scenes in the series, by far.
Setting aside the ridiculous and the tiresome, however, there really are some things I genuinely like about Portrait of M and N. Most of the time, a shoujo romance is presented from the girl’s point of view. She falls in love with the boy and we’re privy to her emotions, but we rarely, if ever, get inside his head. That is not the case here and, in fact, I believe there has been more attention paid to Natsuhiko’s developing feelings than Mitsuru’s.
As one bit of text reads, “She swiftly fell in love in spring, he realized he was falling in love in summer.” For Mitsuru, it was easy to fall in love with Natsuhiko, who is kind and understands her, but for Natsuhiko, the realization that he is falling in love with someone else is doubly important because it means that he can. All of his life, relatives and classmates have been vocal in their doubts that such a thing would ever be possible, but he has proved them wrong, and his happiness is mixed with not a little relief.
While I find Hijiri generally annoying, he is useful in that his interactions with Mitsuru force Natsuhiko to confront how he feels about her, and they end volume two by sharing an awkwardly cute moment together. It’s for scenes like these that I’ll continue to read Portrait of M & N and hope that there’s less to irk me in volumes to come.
Portrait of M & N is published by TOKYOPOP. The series is complete in Japan with six volumes, and two have been released in English so far.
Review copies provided by the publisher.
From the back cover:
Romance abounds as Uru’s life becomes entangled with all the men around her. A visit to the Takamura house by Shindo and Ichiro has Uru’s step-dad worried their lack of visible emotions may cause undue anxiety for his lovely daughter. But is that all he has to worry about? Later, a run-in with Uru has Sou Abekawa reevaluating his feelings for her, and things get complicated when Kenshi, the cousin with a crush on Uru, comes for a visit. How will Uru deal with all the mishaps coming her way?
Review:
After enjoying the laid-back comedy offered in the first volume of Happy Cafe, I was pretty disappointed when the second volume featured a rivalry between bakeries that had Uru on her most obnoxious behavior. Thankfully, the series’ third installment marks a return to the tone of the debut, with a variety of stand-alone episodes meant to show the sibling-esque bond between Uru and her two hot-but-strange coworkers.
The back cover would have one think that Uru is in a tizzy because of all these fellows with feelings for her, but honestly, she is completely oblivious. Sometimes a heroine’s cluelessness in such matters really annoys me, but with Uru, it’s more like her mind is simply completely on other things. It’s not that she wants these guys to like her and thinks that they don’t, it’s that she’s just not mentally in a place where romance is even a consideration. So, what we get is less a romantic comedy and more a series of vignettes in which Uru’s personality—and propensity to break out in sunny, heartfelt smiles—endears her to everyone around her.
That’s not to say there are no funny moments, though. My favorite is when step-dad is questioning Shindo and Uru, who live next door to one another. “Anything… unusually inappropriate going on?” he asks. “Such as neighbors getting intimate with other neighbors? Inappropriately?” I suspect some of what makes me giggle there has to do with the English adaptation, but it pleased me all the same.
I wasn’t really sold on Happy Cafe until this volume, but now I think I might have to see it through to the end simply because I like the characters and have found it in my heart to forgive them for brief interludes (volume two) during which they are annoying.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
When this series was wrapping up in Japan, I heard rumors about how it ended. Word was fans were peeved because, in the end, the heroine does not make a decision between the twin brothers for whom she has feelings. It turns out that this isn’t true, though author’s notes from Tanemura indicate that her original intention was for Haine to marry both boys and not just one. And yes, this is the kind of shojo that ends with a wedding.
As the conclusion approaches, all kinds of things happen that are probably supposed to be dramatic but just make me laugh. Haine confronts the twins’ grandfather about an archaic family tradition that establishes one as the heir and the other as mere stand-in, demonstrating her anger by ripping up a chair cushion. She then proceeds to talk down a gun-wielding friend by diagnosing his angst within three pages, gets shot anyway, narrates insipid dialogue like “Even if I’m mistaken… if what I make my mind up to do will lead to happiness then I can do it,” convinces gramps to acknowledge both twins, relays the good news to the boys, and then promptly collapses from her wound.
It’s all extremely silly, but there’s at least some enjoyment to be derived from watching all the clichés at play. Also, it seems that the art—though extravagantly toned as per usual—is a bit prettier in this volume. Perhaps Tanemura stepped it up a notch for the big finale.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
At some point in the near future, the national government of Japan passes the Media Betterment Act, which “seeks to exercise censorship over all media, including restricting offensive books.” Libraries are the only institutions able to oppose them, and so local governments build up armed forces to defend their libraries, which continue to preserve banned works in their collections and make them available to the people.
When Iku Kasahara was in her final year of high school, a member of the Library Forces intervened during a bookstore raid and prevented a beloved book from falling into the grasp of the Media Betterment Committee. The incident made a big impression on her and, after graduating from college, she enlists. As a new recruit, she must attend classes, complete grueling physical challenges, help out at the local library, and participate in woodsy training sessions.
While we see all of these scenarios play out in this introductory volume, the focus is really on Iku’s relationship with Dojo, her cranky commanding officer. To the reader, it is plainly obvious that he was the one who helped Iku in the bookstore that day, but Iku fails to connect him with her idealized prince. Because he pushes her harder than the other recruits—since he expects more of her—she thinks he hates her and is suspicious of his occasional kindness. For his part, Dojo is clearly smitten and impressed by Iku’s determination, even though her frequent intellectual lapses do try his patience.
Library Wars is a perfectly decent read, but it does have some issues. Firstly, the basic concept, as inherited by the series of light novels upon which the manga is based. If the national government has banned offensive books, why isn’t it going after the publishers of these books isntead of waiting until they’ve actually been printed to go confiscate them from bookstores? That doesn’t make much sense.
Secondly, the protagonist. I really appreciate that Iku is a physically coordinated heroine in her twenties, but wish that she wasn’t portrayed as such a scholastic ditz, forever sleeping in class and having to learn on the job what she was supposed to have learned in the classroom. I found myself sympathizing with Tezuka, her antagonistic fellow recruit, who is annoyed that such a slacker is able to achieve the same honor—a spot on an elite squad—that he was only able to attain through hard work.
Lastly, I am bothered by the inconsistency with which VIZ (presumably) has treated the characters’ ranks. Iku is first introduced as a Corporal, yet she is later identified as a Sergeant on a chart of characters and their positions and, indeed, the insignia on her uniform bears this out. Dojo, in turn, is called a Sergeant but according to the chart and his uniform, is actually a First Lieutenant. I know I shouldn’t let this sort of thing distract me from the story, but it’s a mistake that’s repeated so frequently I just couldn’t help it. Hopefully they’ll correct it for volume two.
I enjoyed Library Wars enough that I plan to continue with the series, though I doubt it’ll ever top my personal list of beloved books.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s this clumsy, kind-hearted girl who learns she’s really a princess and… Oh. You’ve stopped me.
When the female protagonist of a series is “a completely uncoordinated fourth grader,” you just know you’re dealing with a magical girl story. Fairy Navigator Runa is an unoriginal example of the genre, starring a clumsy but kind-hearted girl who learns that she is not only the princess of the fairy world but also possessed of a great power. Yawn.
Runa is resistant to this news at first, but when one friend—whose sole character trait is “the one who clutches a teddy bear”—is nearly struck by a car and another is captured by an evil ferret creature, Runa’s desire to protect her friends awakens her awesome ability to… send fairies back home. Yes, that is her amazing talent, and the inspiration for the manga’s title.
This manga is simply boring. It’s also full of cheesy dialogue like, “I am the one who holds the key to your destiny.” The only original elements are the creepy third eye on the back of Runa’s neck—such an uncute element is rare in this kind of tale—and Sae, the tomboyish best friend who looks at Runa in a very special way upon being rescued. Slashy!
There’s no shortage of magical girl manga out there, so if that’s what you’re after, it shouldn’t be hard to find one better than this.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
Miku Yamada has finally managed to make her dense crush, Kyohei Fujioka, understand that she has feelings for him, even though he doesn’t reciprocate. Meanwhile, a pompous classmate publicly declares his affections for Miku and attempts to get Kyohei expelled for stealing the answers to the midterm exams. Later, Miku and Kyohei are both assigned to the Sports Day Planning Committee, where the lovely chief gets too close to Kyohei for Miku’s comfort.
I didn’t have too great an impression of this series after the first volume, since I found the lead character abrasive and largely to blame for her own angst. Things improve in volume two, in which Miku’s tendency to rant actually helps clear up the cheating accusation and in which Kyohei exhibits sufficient obliviousness to justify her irritation. There’s also an especially nice chapter where the two of them get lost on their way to karaoke with friends and end up having a nice time together at the arcade, complete with some genuinely amusing photo stickers.
Unfortunately, we’re only in volume two and the cast already includes four romantic rivals. They do propel the plot along, at least, with the Planning Committee chief causing Miku some pain when she realizes that something Kyohei said to her is the same thing he’d say to anybody else and the new male character offering to reveal Kyohei’s mysterious secret if Miku goes out with him, but it’s still tiresome.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
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