By Mitsurou Kubo | Published by Kodansha Comics
Having greatly enjoyed Yuri!!! on Ice, written by Mitsurou Kubo, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of some of Kubo’s manga in English. (In addition to Again!! from Kodansha, Vertical Comics has just published the first omnibus of Moteki, which I shall be reviewing within the next week or so.) Happily, Again!! did not disappoint.
This shounen series begins on March 14, 2014, when long-haired, scary-looking outcast Kinichiro Imamura is about to graduate from high school. He’s friendless, and despite going to a good school, he has no college or employment plans. The graduation ceremony reminds him of his entrance ceremony three years ago, during which the lone remaining member of the ouendan club (a girl, at that) tried to recruit new members. This spurs him to go check out the now-deserted ouendan club room and, when chasing after a female classmate who gets the wrong idea, he ends up falling down the stairs and three years into the past.
Now it’s April 6, 2011 and Kinichiro has a chance to do it all over again. Will he manage to navigate school this time without scaring people? He decides to actually talk to the ouendan girl this time, and learns her name is Yoshiki Usami. In a neat twist, the girl he was chasing also fell down the stairs and ends up back in the past with him. Her name is Akira Fujieda, and while Kinichiro begins to make small improvements on his high school experience—dispelling notions that he’s in a gang or that his blond hair signifies anything other than a hair stylist’s whim—Akira’s knowledge of the future alienates her classmates and would’ve-been future boyfriend.
Mostly, though, the focus is on the ouendan club and Kinichiro’s attempts to help Usami out. She’s stubborn, however, and resists efforts to draw male membership by featuring her image on recruitment posters. This makes more sense later on, when it’s revealed that she originally got a lot of media attention that led to fallout within the group—stoked by an online smear campaign—leading everyone but her to quit. Complicating matters is the captain of the cheerleading club, Tamaki Abe, who is resentful of having to cooperate with the ouendan, and determined to sabotage them. Happily, the girl she picks to seduce Kinichiro has scruples (and Kinichiro is also not an idiot), so this first volume ends with our heroes savvy to her scheme.
Again!! is a lot of fun. If you’re looking for time travel with a reasonable scientific explanation, then you should probably look elsewhere, but if you just accept the premise and go with it, then it’s kind of like a sports manga and a coming-of-age story rolled into one. I do worry what’s going to happen after Kinichiro reaches his graduation year again. Will these changes stick, and will he be able to go forward in life with more ambition and fewer regrets? I’m confident, though, that these questions will be answered eventually.
Again!! is complete in twelve volumes. The second volume is due out in English next week.
Review copy provided by the publisher.
I admit that I was initially attracted to Lovesick Ellie because of the covers, which are adorable. My favorite is the third, because it perfectly captures Ohmi-kun’s personality.
Eriko Ichimura is a plain girl whom nobody notices. (Yes, this is one of those Dessert manga where the friendless girl attracts the notice of the most popular boy in school.) In lieu of real relationships, Eriko entertains herself by writing fantasies about Ohmi-kun on an anonymous Twitter account under the name Lovesick Ellie. One day, she accidentally catches a glimpse of the real Ohmi-kun. Shocked, she leaves her cellphone behind, enabling Ohmi to read her tweets about him. Rather than be mad, he thinks they’re hilarious. In exchange for her keeping his secret, he offers to fulfill her fantasies, then laughs when she’s, like, “Okay!” In the end, he decides to trust her.
As they navigate their new relationship, there are various firsts, and a lot of blushing, and some misunderstandings, and some mean girls who disapprove of Ohmi dating someone (though they mistakenly think he’s dating Sara, the friend Eriko eventually acquires). None of this is new shoujo manga territory, but the characters are refreshing. Ohmi is seriously endearing, especially once his bratty attitude subsides and he allows himself to be sweet and vulnerable. He’s apologetic for the things he gets wrong, and encourages Eriko not to give up on him. For her part, Eriko is kind of a spaz, but shoujo heroines are not typically this horny, so that’s a unique aspect, for sure. It certainly makes for some snerkworthy declarations, like when she proclaims, “I like you sexually!”
After having been bullied in school back home in Japan, Tsukishiro Nina comes to live with her uncle in the tiny principality of Ruberia, famous for its roses. Outwardly, it’s an affluent place, but Nina soon learns—after being bitten by a luga and taking on some of their characteristics—that wolf-like people known as luga serve as slave labor for the humans in Ruberia, and that young luga are all rounded up and sent to an island prison/school called Abigaile, where they learn how to serve humans. Nina is sent there after her transformation and must try to blend in, because if the other luga find out she’s human, they’ll turn on her.
That said, Nina is actually the least interesting character to me. I probably shouldn’t like Roy, the luga who bit her and who is the alpha of the most dangerous “home” (basically a pack) in Abigaile. He enjoys tormenting Nina but he’s definitely the most fascinating character so far, especially when we learn at the end of volume two that he himself had hoped to unite the luga but couldn’t. Nina and Roy actually remind me of Clarke and Bellamy in The 100—two teens who emerged as leaders from among a disenfranchised group of youth who disagree with each other’s methods, but if they could trust each other and become a team, then they might really have a chance. (Granted, I haven’t seen more than a handful of episodes at this point.) I like that dynamic between them and look forward to Roy eventually coming to trust Nina.
First off: The Promised Neverland is amazing and you should go buy it. I’d heard good things about it, but hadn’t expected this degree of exhilarating awesomeness. Secondly: I will do my best to avoid major spoilers, but a few are unavoidably required to describe (and compliment) the plot. Take heed!
I had heard good things about Frau Faust and figured I would probably like it too, but I wasn’t prepared for the “OMG, I love this!” feeling that overtook me after the first dozen pages or so. I loved it so much, in fact, that the first seven volumes of Yamazaki’s other published-in-English series, The Ancient Magus’ Bride, are currently on their way to my branch of our awesome local library. If Frau Faust is going to be this original and entertaining, clearly I need to read more of Yamazaki’s work!
After the errand is complete, Marion refuses to let his memories of the encounter be wiped, and tags along with Johanna on her journey to gather the rest of Mephisto, whom she refers to as “my adorable, detestable, unfathomable idiot of a dog.” As the trail leads Johanna to a town where the church is protecting Mephisto’s leg, we learn more about why the demon has been quartered and his parts kept under guard—his only charge is performing an immortality curse upon the dead—and what this means for Johanna. Whenever she sustains an injury, she is able to heal herself, but has a finite supply of physical material to work with, thus she ends up looking younger each time. 
Tetsu Misato makes up for what he lacks in height with his energy and determination. Due to a mysterious promise he made to his hospitalized mother, Tetsu is driven to earn money. So much so that he plains to join the work force after graduation and already is working several part-time jobs while in high school, abandoning the soccer team as a result. To prove to his father that he is ready to hold down a job, he begins working through his father’s housekeeping agency at the Karasawa mansion. There have long been rumors that the place is haunted, but Tetsu soon learns that the “frail, sickly daughter” who allegedly lives in a separate building is a real and friendly girl, no apparition at all.
Mitsuki Haruno is a first-year in high school who has always had trouble making friends. Her luck begins to change when she befriends the most popular quartet of boys in school. If someone read those sentences to me and asked me to guess in which magazine this manga was serialized, I’d say Dessert, based on past offerings we’ve seen from them (like Say I Love You.). And I would be right.
I also quite liked Mitsuki as a character. I could foresee a version of this story in which her failures to initiate social interaction with others might be frustrating, but that’s not the case here at all. The key seems to be Mitsuki’s honesty about the past experiences that are holding her back in the present, and by the end of the third volume she has made two female friends. Reina is, awesomely, a major fujoshi and envisions the four boys (all of whom are on the basketball team) in romantic pairings. I love the little background gags of her taking surreptitious pictures of them. Maki is a member of the girls basketball team who, unbeknownst to Mitsuki, also has a thing for princely Asakura.
But will he act on those feelings? The boys on the basketball team are not allowed to date. I did find it strange that although these boys talk about how much basketball means to them, because this is shoujo manga, we see sadly little of it. In volume three, the inter-high preliminaries have begun and in the space of 1.5 pages, the boys have won five games. I know this isn’t a sports manga, but c’mon… I’d like to see more than that! Another thing to appreciate about Mitsuki is that, while many of the team’s other female fans are just there to look at the cute boys, she understands how important the game is to Asakura and overcomes her shyness and orchestrate a cheering section when they fall behind during a practice game. Too, I greatly appreciate that she hasn’t had to deal with any mean girls warning her away from the boys. (Reina’s occasional “grr” reactions at girls hanging around them are enough.)
Neri Oishi was a great volleyball player in elementary school, when she was captain of a team that took second place in the national championship. At her prestigious middle school, however, she’s a benchwarmer, often tasked with picking up balls and doing laundry. One of her teammates, Chiyo, is vocally frustrated by the situation, since she played against Neri’s team and knows how good she is. After injuring Chiyo during an argument, Neri must play in her stead in a practice game. Try as she might to suppress them, her aggressive tendencies flare, and she ends up injuring a teammate. Disaster is further assured when her childhood friend/osteopath Shigeru chooses the boys’ bathroom as a treatment venue. Upon discovery (and subsequent misunderstanding), Neri is forced to resign from the volleyball club.
Neri is ashamed of the selfish way she sometimes plays, and wants to change. She’s also absolutely certain that anyone trying to be friends with her is going to end up regretting it. To this end, she initially keeps her #1 fan, Manabu Odagiri, at a distance. Neri saved Manabu from bullies when they were kids, and Manabu has never forgotten it. It soon becomes clear that Manabu is now in the one in the position to help, urging Neri to try to talk to people instead of simply interpreting things in the worst way possible.
It’s 2052 and Tokio Watarai, a dream pilot, is coming home to Japan for the first time in three years. Although his ex-wife and son are in Japan, he’s actually returning for a job involving a girl who’s been sleeping for seven years since being found with her parents’ hearts in her stomach. Her name is Aoba, and when Tokio enters her dream it’s all about an island called Barbara in which kids can fly and cannibalism factors in to funeral rites. Soon, he learns that his son, Kiriya, actually invented Barbara. So how is Aoba able to dream about it? 
By the end of the first volume, so very many plot threads are in the air that I was not at all sure that Hagio-sensei would be able to make everything make sense in the end. To use just one example: If Barbara is just a dream—and, indeed, no such island actually exists—then how is it possible that the blood of its residents is used for anti-aging medicine? And yet we see evidence that such advances are already in the works. And because of all this plot stuff, there’s not a lot of time for building solid relationships. There is angst aplenty, especially courtesy of Kiriya, but the whole Marienbad/Tokio hookup, for example, is just extremely random. The strongest bond, though, is definitely the love Tokio feels for his son and his regret over having been a crappy father.
I am an enormous fan of Kodansha’s digital offerings, so it pains me to admit that I can’t find anything to recommend about Love’s Reach.
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