Wandering Son 1 by Shimura Takako: A

March 10, 2011 by 9 Comments

Book description:
The fifth grade. The threshold to puberty, and the beginning of the end of childhood innocence. Shuichi Nitori and his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki have happy homes, loving families, and are well-liked by their classmates. But they share a secret that further complicates a time of life that is awkward for anyone: Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl, and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Written and drawn by one of today’s most critically acclaimed creators of manga, Shimura portrays Shuishi and Yoshino’s very private journey with affection, sensitivity, gentle humor, and unmistakable flair and grace. Volume one introduces our two protagonists and the friends and family whose lives intersect with their own. Yoshino is rudely reminded of her sex by immature boys whose budding interest in girls takes clumsily cruel forms. Shuichi’s secret is discovered by Saori, a perceptive and eccentric classmate. And it is Saori who suggests that the fifth graders put on a production of The Rose of Versailles for the farewell ceremony for the sixth graders—with boys playing the roles of women, and girls playing the roles of men.

Wandering Son is a sophisticated work of literary manga translated with rare skill and sensitivity by veteran translator and comics scholar Matt Thorn.

Review:
The main thing I kept thinking about while reading Wandering Son—beyond the continuous undercurrent of general squee—is how things that seem insignificant to one person can be secretly, intensely significant to someone else.

Wandering Son begins simply. Nitori Shuichi (the translation retains Japanese name order) is an extremely shy fifth-grade boy, and as the volume opens, he and his sixth-grade sister, Maho, are preparing for their first day at a new school. Upon arrival, Shuichi is instructed to sit next to Takatsuki Yoshino, a girl so tall and handsome that she’s called Takatsuki-kun by her classmates. They become friends.

One day, when Shuichi goes to Takatsuki’s house to work on some homework, he spies a frilly dress hanging in her room. Perhaps Takatsuki didn’t mean much of anything when she suggested that Shuichi should wear it, but it’s an idea that refuses to leave his head, despite his protests that he isn’t interested. He ends up taking the dress home and giving it to Maho, but its presence in their shared bedroom taunts him.

At this point, Shuichi isn’t thinking about things like gender identity. He’s ten! Instead, he’s dealing with processing the new idea that he could wear a dress and that he might even want to. Slowly, and bolstered by interactions with another encouraging classmate, he begins experimenting. First, he buys a headband. Then he tries dressing as a girl while no one else is home. Finally, when Takatsuki reveals her own treasured possession—her elder brother’s cast-off junior high uniform—he tries going out as a girl in public, with Takatsuki (as a boy) at his side.

One wonders what would’ve happened to Shuichi without Takatsuki to set the example. Would he have become aware of these feelings within himself eventually or been somehow unfulfilled forever? Her comments and her acceptance mean more to him than she knows, as he has a habit of internalizing things that are said to him. After an adorable turn in a female role in a drag version of The Rose of Versailles at school, for example, Maho conversationally notes, “You should have been born a girl.” Again, this is a concept that’s new to Shuichi, but one he gradually comes to believe is true. When his grandmother promises to buy him a present, he visualizes his female form and realizes it’s what he most wants. “Even grandma can’t buy me this.”

I had no problem seeing Takatsuki as a boy throughout, because of her inner certainty and obviously boyish appearance, but Shuichi was more problematic. The moment he confronts the mental vision of what he feels he should be, however, and realizes that he truly wants to be a girl, he starts to become one for the reader. By contrast, it’s shocking when the onset of her first period reminds readers that Takatsuki is biologically female. Though she mostly projects a confident air, her anguish at the undeniable truth that she is not really a boy is intense.

The story is subtle, simple, poignant, and innocent. The tone is matched by Shimura’s uncluttered artwork, which features big panels, little screentone, and extremely minimal backgrounds. These factors combine to make the volume go by quickly, and all too soon it’s over. While waiting for volume two, in which Shuichi and Takatsuki will progress to the sixth grade, I suspect I will have to console myself with the anime adaptation, currently available on Crunchyroll.

The first volume of Wandering Son—published in English by Fantagraphics—will be available in June 2011. The series is still ongoing in Japan, where it is currently up to eleven volumes.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: LGBTQIA+, Manga, Seinen Tagged With: ,

The Story of Saiunkoku 2 by Kairi Yura and Sai Yukino: B+

March 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Shurei Hong, destitute but of noble birth, has always dreamed of working as a civil servant in the imperial court of Saiunkoku, but women are barred from holding office. The emperor Ryuki, however, refuses to take command, leaving everything to his advisors. Shurei is asked to become a consort to the emperor to persuade the ne’er-do-well ruler to govern.

After realizing Ryuki has been faking his ignorance, an enraged Shurei demands to be sent home immediately. Ryuki then locks Shurei in her room, unaware he has now put his consort in great danger…

Review:
With this volume, The Story of Saiunkoku proves that is more than just a romance. Even though the developing relationship between Shurei, a poor yet noble lady brought in to the imperial palace to serve as consort and tutor, and Ryuki, her vacuous-seeming charge, remains the driving force for much of what happens, more space is devoted here to exploring the political rivalries and ambitions of others and how their schemes impact the main characters.

Essentially, in order to motivate Ryuki to give up his charade of stupidity and become a worthy emperor, one of his advisors puts Shurei’s life in peril. Ryuki rises to the challenge admirably, shedding his foolish façade and employing badass sword skills and cleverness to come to the rescue. Along the way, he admits why he was acting so dumb in the first place as well as why he has been avoiding relationships with women, even though he actually does fancy them as much as men. Both explanations make a surprising amount of sense.

If volume one served to introduce us to Shurei and her awesomeness, volume two does the same for Ryuki. He’s not only capable of great competence, but he’s also an honest guy and genuinely loves Shurei. She, however, sees her position at court as only temporary and when it becomes obvious that Ryuki doesn’t need a tutor after all, she heads home.

Other nice things about this volume are the brotherly reunion scenes between Ryuki and Seien, who was technically banished thirteen years ago but whose current identity has been obvious; a thoroughly surprising revelation about the Black Wolf, an assassin who did the bidding of the previous emperor; a plethora of attractive bishounen; and the bonus chapter about Ryuki’s love of Shurei’s steamed buns, which he has unknowingly been consuming since childhood (his tutor was Shurei’s father). Thanks to this last, I now have a serious craving.

I’m really enjoying The Story of Saiunkoku a great deal, especially now that it’s gotten beyond the few episodes I saw of the anime. I’m hopeful that the balance between romance and politics will continue, since both leads are at their best when required to exercise their intellect.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Historical Fantasy, Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Tidbits: A TOKYOPOP Assortment

February 27, 2011 by 4 Comments

TOKYOPOP released a slew of books towards the end of 2010 and quite a few among them are from series I’m either reading or buying and hoarding (as is my wont). In a desperate effort to stay current, I’m tackling some of them in Tidbits format! Alice in the Country of Hearts is up first, with my take on volumes four and five, followed by volumes four through six of Happy Cafe, volume seven of Maid Sama!, volume three of Neko Ramen, and volume eight of Silver Diamond. Happy reading!

Alice in the Country of Hearts 4-5 by QuinRose and Soumei Hoshino: B
Reading Alice in the Country of Hearts is a lot like having a lollipop for a snack. It’s pleasant while you’re consuming it, but doesn’t provide any actual sustenance.

While things do happen to Alice in these two volumes, nothing appears to have lasting consequence. For instance, Julius the clock maker encourages Alice to move elsewhere—to a place where she won’t feel obliged to earn her keep—but Alice doesn’t want to leave! She explains this to Julius and, okay, she can stay.

Then Ace, the resident sociopath, decides that since proximity to Alice and her newfangled morals (she spends a fair amount of time convincing the people of Wonderland that their lives have value) hasn’t changed him like it has changed others, he ought to kill her. So he shows up at the clock tower with that intent, but Alice talks to him earnestly and he changes his mind. The same basic thing happens when she confronts the Hatter, Blood, for saying nasty things about her.

I still like Alice a lot, though, and was happy to see that the magical vial she was given at the start of the series finally makes another appearance. The gist of the game was that she had to fill this vial through interaction with others, and now it’s nearly full. The sixth and final volume in this series only recently came out in Japan, which means we’ve got quite a wait, but I’m interested to see whether it will manage to bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.

Happy Cafe 4-6 by Kou Matsuzuki: B-
Happy Cafe—the story of a child-like high school student named Uru Takamura who works at a café with a pair of bishounen, surly Shindo and narcoleptic Ichiro—can sometimes be pretty boring. The episodic chapters frequently feature uninspiring plots (Uru plans a party for her bosses!) and stock shoujo situations (Uru’s class is doing a café for the school festival!). I’ve also lost count of how many guys seem to fancy Uru.

And yet, the series can also be quite charming. For every chapter where the plot is “our heroine tames a bratty kid,” there’s a good one that offers insight into the characters, like the story of why Shindo kept his surname (and kept his distance) when the proprietor of Café Bonheur took him in as a child or a glimpse at Ichiro when he was a suffocating model student just finding, through his job at the café, the means to bring happiness to others. The overall tone is light and warm, and though sometimes the humor fails to amuse—Uru is a bit too spazzy for my tastes—it’s also occasionally genuinely funny.

In short, Happy Cafe is like the manga equivalent of a sitcom: the setting and the characters don’t change very much, and sometimes the situations in which they find themselves are pretty silly, but it’s still enjoyable to spend short spans of time in their company.

Maid Sama! 7 by Hiro Fujiwara: B
No one could ever accuse Maid Sama! of being a great manga, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it anyway. In execution, it reminds me most of Ouran High School Host Club, in that each volume is predominantly made up of episodic hijinks but yet manages to include at least one genuinely romantic scene between its two leads. The subsequent squee causes readers to conveniently forget about anything less-than-stellar that might have come before.

I’ve fallen into this trap myself. I suffered through a rather dull chapter about Misaki’s incognito participation in a sweets-eating contest and a bonus chapter about Aoi, the insufferable cross-dressing nephew of Maid Latte’s manager, but all is forgiven because Misaki actually tells Usui that she likes him, in her own Misaki kind of way!

The fact that this takes place at a school festival, and that they smooch to the accompaniment of fireworks, is pretty clichéd. Perhaps I’m remiss for not skewering the series for its flaws, but it’s got me in its clutches now. I just don’t want to dwell on what it does wrong when the relationship between Misaki and Usui is so satisfying when they’re actually open about their feelings. Oh, I’m sure they’ll go back to bickering soon enough, but this moment of honesty will probably sustain me for a while.

I have a hard time recommending Maid Sama! because it really is merely adequate sometimes, but if one goes into it forewarned, I think one could be surprised by how enjoyable cliché can be.

Neko Ramen 3 by Kenji Sonishi: B+
Neko Ramen had me worried for a moment there. Its truly funny first volume easily cemented it as the best 4-koma manga I’ve ever read, but the second disappointed me with its dogged (har har) insistence on gags related to the wacky gimmicks feline proprietor, Taisho, comes up with to promote his ramen shop. I missed the cat-related humor.

That’s not to say that wacky gimmicks are wholly absent from this third volume—indeed, there are many, including the introduction of a hot towel service, complete with a sensitive “hot towel artist,” and “boomeramen,” where ramen is served to patrons on frisbees—but the humor feels more well-rounded. The cat humor is back (hooray!), and I giggled when a kitty is given responsibility over the hot towel service and when a group of kitties, caught up in World Cup frenzy, attempts to play soccer.

The cast is expanded, as well. Shige-chan, the thieving part-timer, is back and Sonishi-sensei manages to make me like him by virtue of a short feature in which he’s unable to resist sharing his lunch with various hungry animals. There’s also Tetsuo, a truck driver with an enthusiastic fondness for card games (the rules of which he hasn’t bothered to learn), and a pair of new characters—female otaku Watanabe and bishounen eating champion, Akkun. They bring with them all kinds of new opportunities for silliness.

All in all, this is a big improvement over the second volume and restores my faith in the series.

Silver Diamond 8 by Shiho Sugiura: B+
Although Rakan and friends set out for the imperial capital in the previous volume, they hardly make any progress toward that goal in this one. Instead, they come across a pair of giant, underground-dwelling snakes who have become cognizant of the fact that the land is dying and that they, too, will soon perish.

In true Silver Diamond fashion, however, these snakes are neither monstrous nor malevolent. Instead, they’re afraid of death and confused about what’s happening to them and about what they even were in the first place. The first snake swallows Rakan and friends and conveys them a short distance before dying and turning into a river. When the group later encounters a second snake who is freaking out about what his fate will be, Rakan is able to calm him by giving an answer. It’s all very sweet, far more sweet than one would think a volume devoted to the fates of giant snakes would ever be.

Along the way, Rakan wins the respect of still more villagers and does a lot of planting with the seeds he’s acquired so far. Additionally, the serpentine encounters remind Narushige of when, as a child, his cold-hearted mother once tried to sacrifice him to a similar creature. This actually reminds me a lot of Yuki Sohma in Fruits Basket, whose mother basically surrendered him for the advancement of her family. Like Yuki, Narushige is a reserved character who here resolves to try to forget his cruel mother and change through proximity to his new group of friends. No wonder he’s emerging as my favorite character.

Again, I admit that the pace of this series is leisurely, but it’s lovely and compelling all the same. I recommend it highly.

Review copies for the fourth volumes of Alice in the Country of Hearts and Happy Cafe provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo, Shounen, Tidbits Tagged With:

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch: A

February 20, 2011 by 2 Comments

From the back cover:
Mirka Hirschberg is a spunky, strong-willed eleven-year-old who isn’t interested in knitting lessons from her stepmother, or how-to-find-a-husband advice from her sister, or you-better-not warnings from her brother. There’s only one thing Mirka does want: to fight dragons! But she’ll need a sword—and therein lies the tale!

Review:
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword is a delightful story, due in large part to not being what I expected.

As the back cover avers, Mirka is indeed spunky and strong-willed and fantasizes about being a heroic slayer of dragons. Her day-to-day life amongst an isolated community of Orthodox Jews seems anything but heroic, however, full as it is of school, chores, worship, and instruction in “womanly arts” like knitting. When the casual theft of a grape from a mysterious garden leads to an encounter with an angry monster (it’s actually a pig, but Mirka has never seen one before), Mirka finds herself dealing with a foe nobody else believes in.

Eventually, Mirka not only extracts a promise from the vengeful pig (who is very proud of its garden) to leave her alone, she later saves it from some bullies, which causes its owner, a bizarre woman with a witchy mien, to be in her debt. The witch reads Mirka’s mind to identify her heart’s desire provides instructions as to where she might find a sword, that first essential ingredient to becoming a dragon slayer.

Now, I had thought this was going to be a story about a girl who gets a sword and discovers that she’s the chosen one, et cetera, but that’s actually not what happens. True, Mirka has a moonlit encounter with a troll in order to obtain the weapon, but it’s a knitting showdown she wins by virtue of emulating her stepmother’s prodigious talent for arguing. She then leaves the troll with the responsibility of safeguarding the sword and goes back home.

Will there be more daring adventures for Mirka in the future? I certainly hope so, but the best thing about this comic is that Deutsch realizes that the real mystery for readers is not the slayage of fantastic beasties but Mirka’s orthodox lifestyle. There are many interesting details about her daily life, including things like the amount of work that goes into preparing for Shabbos or what the popular girls wear at school. Even if the story ended here, I would be satisfied, because Mirka has learned to value not only her stepmother more, but also the traditional skills she’s expected to learn. Perhaps it will be enough for her to have proven she could earn the sword, even while she realizes that she’s happy with her current life.

While I’d heartily recommend this comic to anyone, I’d love to see how girls of Mirka’s age react to it. Maybe they’d be disappointed by the scarcity of fantastic elements, but I could be underestimating them. For me, at any rate, it was quite a pleasant surprise.

Filed Under: Comics, Fantasy Tagged With:

Barefoot Gen 1 Keiji Nakazawa: B

February 18, 2011 by 4 Comments

From the back cover:
Barefoot Gen is the powerful, tragic story of the bombing of Hiroshima, seen through the eyes of the artist as a young boy growing up in a Japanese anti-militarist family. Of particular interest is Barefoot Gen‘s focus on family in a militarized culture, and the special problems which they encounter. Barefoot Gen brings home the reality of an event in our history which we must never allow to happen again.

Review:
Barefoot Gen is a largely autobiographical, slightly fictionalized account of a young boy’s perspective of the bombing of Hiroshima. It’s drawn in a cartoony style reminiscent of Osamu Tezuka, and puts the experiences of the Nakaoka family into broader historical context.

My initial reactions to the first volume of Barefoot Gen made me feel like a bad person. I had expected to instantly like Gen and the Nakaoka family, but found them very difficult to sympathize with at first. Part of the problem for me is what Art Spiegelman describes in his introduction as “casual violence.” Certainly in a series about war and the aftermath of an atomic bomb, I expected there to be some disturbing imagery. I did not expect, though, that the members of a “peace-loving family” like the Nakaokas would be so violent themselves.

Daikichi Nakaoka, the father of the clan, is outspoken about his opposition to the war, which makes him and his family the target of much harrassment by their neighbors. You’d think that being against the war would mean that Daikichi is opposed to violence in general, but that’s not true. I lost count of how many times he smacks someone (usually a child) and sends him or her sprawling into a wall. This tendency for violence extends to his wife (who brandishes a knife on several occasions) and his youngest sons (who twice gnaw off the fingertips of admittedly odious people).

It got to the point where I actively began heckling them! Heckling the victims of a nuclear holocaust!

When the family’s wheat field—upon which they were relying as a future food source—is trampled, Daikichi cries, “Who in the hell would do such a thing?”

My response: “Uh, everyone?”

After Kimie, Gen’s mother, holds his eldest brother Koji at knifepoint because he wants to join the navy and thereby improve public opinion of his family, Daikichi says, “The fool. He doesn’t have to go off and get killed in the war.”

My response: “He can get killed right here at home!”

Just when I was sure I was going to the special hell, however, things began to improve. Koji’s decision to enroll in the Naval Air Corps somehow triggers a better meld between the tone of the story and how the characters behave. Gen, who is initially merely an excitable kid who doesn’t think too much about what he says or does, begins to grow up a bit and becomes much more sympathetic as a result.

My favorite part of the volume is when Gen discovers his younger brother, Shinji, humiliating himself for an opportunity to play with another kid’s toy battleship. He puts a stop to it, and when he spots another toy battleship in the window of a glass repair shop, attempts to buy it. While he’s waiting to talk to the owner—who tells him it belonged to his dead son and isn’t for sale—he overhears him being threatened by men to whom he owes money and decides to help out, Gen-style, which entails throwing rocks and breaking tons of windows to bring in business. The owner is so grateful he bestows the ship on Gen as a gift, who generously turns it over to Shinji. They make plans to take it down to the river the next day.

Except that the next day is August 6, and that’s when the bomb hits. This whole sequence is truly stunning, and actually included a few historical facts I didn’t know, like how the Enola Gay returned after the air raid sirens had ceased and that the casualties were greater because people thought the danger had passed and emerged from their bomb shelters. It’s also interesting how Nakazawa puts the blame for everything squarely on the Japanese leaders. Even from the start, he’s referring to the war as something “that Japan began with the USA and England.” He’s critical of the government’s refusal to surrender while they’re not the ones suffering, starving, and losing loved ones. The casualty totals are truly overwhelming, and for what? It makes me wonder if the leaders’ stubbornness was some kind of remnant of samurai pride…

Although it was tough going at the beginning, by the end of this volume I was genuinely excited to continue reading the series. I do feel it’s something that’s going to be best in small doses, however. And let’s hope the days of gratuitous finger-chomping are behind us!

Barefoot Gen is published in English by Last Gasp. All ten volumes have been released.

For more on this series, check out the Manga Moveable Feast archive at A Life in Panels.

Filed Under: Historical Fiction, Manga, MMF, Shounen Tagged With:

Banana Fish 11-13 by Akimi Yoshida: A-

February 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

When last we left off, Ash was attempting to escape from a mental institution where the plan is to make him a Banana Fish test subject. Pages of escapey goodness ensue, and Ash has just gotten outside when he realizes that Max and Ibe have been caught trying to help him and has to go back in to save their troublesome butts (awesomely, the background in one panel during this scene is pumpkins, referring to Ash’s fear of same). This plan involves dressing as a nurse.

The escape is ultimately successful. While Ash and Eiji reunite and share a hug after some initial prickliness from our hero, Ash’s foes, Papa Dino and Yut-Lung, make an arrangement by which they will take care of each other’s obstacles. This involves bringing in Blanca, an expert assassin and virtuoso marksman who trained Ash in the past. Ash senses instantly that he’s being followed, but this doesn’t stop him trying to get information from Kippard, the corrupt senator largely responsible for sending him to the institution. While Ash attempts to blackmail the skeevy fellow with compromising photographs, Kippard is suddenly shot before he can talk. The circumstances of the shot are so impressive that Ash begins to suspect who he’s dealing with.

I find Blanca a little problematic as a character. On the one hand, it’s good to have someone around who Ash can’t easily best—“I’m just dust against him,” Ash angsts at one point—but on the other, if he’s so important a figure in Ash’s past and such a formidable adversary, why haven’t we had so much as a tiny hint about him before? It feels like Yoshida needed to create a character like this to make Ash do what the story dictates he must do. Perhaps I wouldn’t mind so much if he came with a package of ambitions and vulnerabilities, like Yut-Lung, but he’s fairly impersonal about his job so far.

And who exactly is his target? It’s Eiji, of course. It seems like Eiji is forever in this position and Ash always having to protect him, but this time, because it’s Blanca, Ash is more worried than ever and actually goes along with Papa Dino’s plans. It’s fairly shocking to see this happen. At one point, Yut-Lung promises Eiji will be left alone if Ash kills himself right then, and he actually puts a gun to his head and shoots without a second thought. Later, he even begs for Eiji’s life. He begs! This stunned me more than anything else that goes on, because it shows how he’s truly willing to give up everything he has and is to save the one person who he feels genuinely cares about him.

Ash can’t earn Eiji’s safety with his mere death, however, and must comply with some other demands, including handing over all of the Banana Fish research so far, before taking up his position as Papa Dion’s right-hand man and heir apparent. While Ash begins to waste away in that situation, Eiji—and I swear he’s lost that innocent look in his eyes—vows to rescue him. “Give me a gun,” he tells Alex, who Ash left in charge of the gang. “I want you to teach me how to shoot.”

As much as it feels like we’ve been here before, and as random as Blanca’s arrival seems, if this is the point in the story where Eiji finally, finally gets to become a competent badass, then I can’t complain. I’m a little sad that he’s on the verge of becoming a criminal in his own right, but at the same time, I am eager to witness such a fascinating transformation.

For more on these volumes, check out the latest installment of Breaking Down Banana Fish over at Manga Bookshelf!

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With:

Eensy Weensy Monster 1 by Masami Tsuda: B

January 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Nanoha Satsuki, an average, plain-Jane high school student, comfortably spends her time in the shadow of her two beautiful, popular friends. But new guy Hazuki Tokiwa, with his snobbish, arrogant demeanor, has a way of getting under Nanoha’s skin, and releasing her inner monster!

Is this the beginning of an ugly relationship, or does Hazuki have his own hidden qualities?

Review:
I feel a little guilty that I’ve started another Masami Tsuda series rather than actually finish Kare Kano, but this one is so short and cute and I really will finish the other one this year, I swear!

Nanoha Satsuki is normally a calm, friendly girl. Even the attention paid to her childhood friends—princely Nobara, dubbed the “Lady Oscar” of the school, and genius Renge—doesn’t get her down. For some reason, though, a superficial boy named Hazuki and his snobby ways really get her goat. Nanoha attributes these mysterious feelings of anger to a “little parasite” and does her best to keep a lid on them, but one day she’s had enough and lays into Hazuki for being arrogant and narrow-minded.

Should it be a surprise to anyone that these two will eventually end up together? No, but how they get there is actually pretty interesting. After the outburst, Nanoha lives in fear of some kind of retribution, but her words have actually shocked Hazuki out of his reverie. Bratty vanity, as it turns out, is his little monster to overcome. He realizes he has no real friends or goals and comes to appreciate her hard-working qualities. In time, Nanoha is able to relax when he’s around, and by the end of the first volume—after the passage of several months—they’ve become friends.

Tsuda is very good at depicting the opening stages of a couple’s relationship—the first two volumes of Kare Kano are still my favorite part—and puts those skills to good use here. One technique she’s fond of is putting the girl’s perspective of events on the right-side page, and the boy’s on the left, and it works nicely here. For all of the moments when Nanoha catches Hazuki looking at her and thinks he’s plotting something dastardly or contemplating her lack of academic prowess, we see that he’s usually thinking things like, “If I want to be a better person, I should learn from someone like her.”

The overall tone is lighthearted, but one does come to like the leads a good deal by the end. Nanoha’s friends are quirky, too, and I’d like to know more about them, but if the couple gets together in the first two volumes and then we spend loads of time on their friends, I guess this would just turn into a clone of Tsuda’s more famous series.

As a final note, I must mention how much I love what Tsuda does with Hazuki’s fangirls. Immediately after being told off by Nanoha, Hazuki goes to them for sympathy. Instead, they all laugh in his face. “She sees right through you! I mean, we all like you, but we wouldn’t go out with you or anything.” Later, when Hazuki and Nanoha have gotten friendly, a few girls decide that they ought to bully her, but they’re rotten at it. At one point a cluster of girls follows Nanoha after school with the intention of threatening her, only to instinctively end up rallying to her defense when it looks like she’s been accosted by a creepy dude. Then they all find a new prince to swoon over. The end.

In the end, Eensy Weensy Monster is a totally cute and sweet shoujo romance. It probably won’t convert anyone to either the demographic or the genre, but it will provide an afternoon’s pleasant amusement to existing fans of both.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

You & Me, Etc. by Kyugo: A-

January 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What a pleasant surprise! The stories collected in You & Me, Etc. are all very strong, and my only real complaint is that they’re over too quickly!

You can find my review here, as part of Manga Bookshelf’s monthly BL Bookrack column.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Boys' Love, Manga Tagged With:

No Touching At All by Kou Yoneda: A-

January 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

No Touching At All depicts an office fling between two coworkers in their late twenties that grows into something more. Even though formerly straight Togawa declares his love for Shima, Shima just can’t believe that Togawa’s desire for a family won’t eventually tear them apart. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Future Lovers, so if you liked that (and who wouldn’t?!) you’d probably enjoy this, too.

I reviewed No Touching At All for this month’s BL Bookrack at Manga Bookshelf. You can find that review here.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Boys' Love, Manga Tagged With: ,

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight 6 by Jane Espenson: B-

January 24, 2011 by 2 Comments

From the back cover:
Twilight and his gainfully employed military units are hot on Buffy’s magical trail—forcing her and Slayers across the globe into hiding. Buffy retreats into the Tibetan mountains to seek aid from the only person she knows who can suppress his true nature—Oz. Since Oz left Sunnydale he’s gained control over the magic that transforms him with the phases of the moon from man to werewolf. If Buffy, Willow, and the legion of Slayers give up their magic, Twilight might lose their scent, granting them a moment of peace, quiet, and tranquility.

Review:
Before I reread the “Retreat” arc, my memories of it went like this: Buffy and friends go see Oz in Tibet; some huge, brightly colored goddesses are involved; and Buffy discovers that she can fly. Weary of unnecessary cameos—although I genuinely do love Oz—and wary of Buffy’s new ability, I didn’t like this much the first time around.

Though it improves upon a second read, it straddles that line between “what I will agree to consider as canon” and “just somebody’s convoluted fanfic.” Obviously, I know that I am just one opinionated fan among many, but what I’m getting at is that some stuff happens that I genuinely like, and some stuff happens that I’m not crazy about.

After their castle in Scotland was destroyed by a magical bomb, courtesy of Twilight’s minions, Amy and Skinless Warren, the Slayers have been looking for new digs. Public opinion is against them, thanks to Harmony’s current popularity, so they find a secluded sort of bunker, shielded by a woodsy magical illusion. Alas, Twilight hones in on this magic and attacks again, causing them to teleport to the one person they know who has successfully divested himself of magic: Oz.

It’s good to see Oz again, don’t get me wrong, but I’d be happier about it if his return hadn’t come after lesser characters like Ethan Rayne and Dracula. He’s settled down with a “mate” and has a child, and one of the saddest things about this arc is how Buffy descends upon his peaceful life, bringing war and death along with her once Twilight tracks them down yet again.

But before that happens, there’s a peaceful lull during which the Slayers and Willow participate in various chants and physical chores designed to direct their magical powers into the Earth. This allows plenty of time for character-building moments and amusing dialogue, my favorite being the interaction between Giles and the baby. Like so:

Baby: Ga!
Giles: Yes, hello, baby.

and

Baby: (steals Giles’ glasses) Gaha!
Giles: Oh dear.

On a more serious note, Buffy finally tells her friends about her encounter with Dark Willow in the future, which prompts some interesting reactions. Willow confidently swears it couldn’t possibly have been her, but meanwhile, Giles and Andrew are suspicious—especially given Willow’s dark methods of obtaining intel—and begin watching her. Also, just as Buffy begins to ponder wanting to connect with someone, and begins to think Xander might just fit the bill, he and Dawn finally get around to smooching. I might be in the minority here, but I like this pairing, especially since they’ve been shown to have developed a very solid friendship. Given her track record, it’s hard to say whether Buffy’s feelings are genuine or if she’s just lonely.

And speaking of Buffy and decision-making, it’s her choices that have ultimately led to a terrible massacre. True, there were no good alternatives, but she’s entirely responsible for bringing ruin to Oz’s tranquil existence, first by making his home a target for Twilight and his minions, then turning its environs into a battlefield, and finally by summoning some local goddesses—those to whom all that poured-into-the-earth magic was actually going—who kill indiscriminately. As with the Xander situation, this is not out of character for Buffy at all—part of why she’s lovable is that, even though she’s special, hers is an extremely tough role that nobody would envy—but it’s pretty depressing all the same.

I also have trouble believing that anyone thought getting rid of magical defenses—which includes the Slayers’ strength—would be a good idea when they are the target of a massive military operation. I suppose there was the chance that it would keep them hidden, but it doesn’t seem like they bothered to fully investigate the ramifications. A scene in which automatic weapons and grenades are passed out is just really weird, given Whedon’s stance on guns throughout the series.

Although I have issues with it, this arc is ultimately better than I remembered. Most of the fallout from Xander and Dawn and Buffy’s superpowers will come in the next volume, which is a plus, but there will be much crack, as well.

Filed Under: Comics, Media Tie-In, Supernatural Tagged With: ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »