Beauty Pop 2 by Kiyoko Arai: B-

May 9, 2009 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Kiri’s identity as the mysterious “X” who does makeovers behind the scenes is now public knowledge as she competes against hairstylist Narumi in a one-on-one Scissors Project challenge. The hairstylist who loses will receive a haircut by the winner—and must endure whatever that haircut might be…

Review:
This volume introduces a couple of over-the-top annoying characters: Kiri’s flamboyant former neighbor, Iori, and her mom, with whom Iori has evidently been in contact all these years. I don’t like either of them, nor am I fond of Narumi’s angry rants, so found many scenes in this volume to be tiresome. Iori seems to be a master with scents and pheromones, so I reckon that Ochiai (who gets more like Kyoya with each volume) is going to try to recruit him to the Scissors Project before long.

I did like, though, the outcome of Kiri’s challenge against Narumi and another similar situation near the end where the Scissors Project boys have undertaken the task of making an over-forty bride look young and cute while Kiri gives a makeover to the dowdy professor who’s going to be marrying her. It’s the first time we’ve seen a guy get a new look, so that is fun.

I’m kind of concerned that I don’t really like any of the characters after two volumes. Kiri is okay, but the rest of them do absolutely nothing for me. I’m pretty sure I’ve liked at least someone by this point in other series I’ve read. In fact, I think the best character so far is Kiri’s cat, Shampoo. I really am a sucker for cute animal types. Karupin in The Prince of Tennis, Kero in Cardcaptor Sakura, Yoyo in The Palette of 12 Secret Colors and now Shampoo. I adore them all. If only any of the humans were as lovable.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Beauty Pop 1 by Kiyoko Arai: B

May 9, 2009 by 2 Comments

From the back cover:
Although a truly gifted hairstylist, Kiri Koshiba has no interest in using her talent to pursue fame and fortune, unlike the three popular boys in the “Scissors Project” at school. Determined to become the best makeover team in Japan, they give showy makeovers to handpicked girls. As much as Kiri tries to shy away from the Scissors Project spotlight, she finds herself responding to beauty’s call…

Kiri’s friend Kanako gives a present to one of the members of the Scissors Project. Her act of kindness is interpreted as a bribe to get a makeover, and they reject her out of hand for being too ugly. Kiri decides to help Kanako and give the boys a lesson in what true beauty is.

Review:
I’ve heard good things about this series, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed in this first volume. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t had inflated expectations, though. It’s not like it’s at all bad. It’s just that the boys in the Scissors Project are such common types. There’s Narumi, the tousle-haired lead guy; Kei, the cute and energetic snack-freak; and Ochiai, the second-in-command megane (guy with glasses) with a propensity for collecting data on classmates. Basically, he’s Kyoya (Ouran High School Host Club) and Inui (Prince of Tennis) combined. Oh, and Kiri also has the obligatory male friend from childhood, Taro, who will probably be revealed to have a crush on her at some point.

While the boys are kind of bland, Kiri herself is a great character. She’s aloof and unimpressed by the showy theatrics of the Scissors Project. As Taro puts it, Kiri is “pretty much always half-asleep.” It’s revealed that she once had a dream of becoming a beautician, but she claims not to care about that now, even though her dad (owner of a beauty salon) keeps issuing challenges to her, forcing her to improve her skills and trying to nudge her into pursuing them seriously.

Arai’s art is clean and cute, with delicate lines that work well for depicting precisely cut hair. I also love the way Kiri’s cat, Shampoo, is drawn, frequently stretching and lounging about, and how his simple affection is one of the few things that can make Kiri smile.

The situations in this volume are a little repetitive, too. The Scissors Project only makes over hand-picked girls, so when a few desperate girls are denied the makeover of their dreams, Kiri helps them out. Her identity’s a secret at first, and while Narumi freaks out at this unknown challenger, Ochiai puts things together and arranges for a face-off at the cultural festival. While the early chapters aren’t that exciting, the battle between Narumi and Kiri at the festival ends with a cliffhanger that makes me want to read more.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Case Closed 3 by Gosho Aoyama: B+

May 7, 2009 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Jimmy, Rachel and Richard take a vacation aboard a cruise ship, but little do they know that the patriarch of the wealthy Hatamoto family is about to be murdered. With the perpetrator still aboard, can you figure out whodunit before Conan does!?

Review:
I actually quite liked both cases in this volume, which is good, because as the first chapter started out I was feeling rather blah about it all and wondering whether it was time to give up the series.

The first case happens not aboard a cruise ship, as the back cover claims, but upon a charter boat hired by a wealthy family who has celebrated a wedding upon their private island. The family patriarch hates everyone but his granddaughter, and everyone but her hates him, so there are plenty of suspects for his sudden death. Conan, of course, puts it all together. What I liked about this case is that it didn’t involve a needlessly and ludicrously elaborate killing method. The victims are stabbed and, in one case, bludgeoned. The clues instead involved things like locked doors, missing murder weapons, et cetera. Perhaps that’s why this is also the first case where I actually had guessed the correct culprit!

The second case involves a surgeon who has received an old toy and a million yen each month going on two years. The best part of this case is that Rachel starts to realize just how much Conan is leading her father through important deductions. She confronts him a few times about his being Jimmy, but he manages to weasel out of it in the end by having Dr. Agasa call and use the voice modulator thingie to simulate Jimmy’s teenaged voice. Having read some volumes in the upper twenties, I know that Rachel still doesn’t know the truth, but I still really enjoyed her suspicions and how she isn’t fooled by some of the stupid things Conan tries to throw her off his trail.

Filed Under: Manga, Mystery, Shounen Tagged With:

ZE 1-2 by Yuki Shimizu: B-

May 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment

When Raizou’s beloved grandmother dies, he leaves the country home where they had lived and moves to the city, where he enrolls in culinary school and takes a job as a live-in housekeeper at a mansion. There, he meets the members of the Mitou family, who wield the word-based power of kotodama, and their kami-sama, human-like creations made from paper who heal the wounds caused by using kotodama. We are told that relationships between kami-sama and their masters must be homosexual and that healing requires contact with a mucous membrane of some sort. This results in all sorts of lusty shenanigans, as one might expect.

Among those living in the house is Kon, a kami-sama without a master, since the Mitou for whom he was originally created died before they could meet. Typically, a kami-sama in such a situation would be destroyed, but Waki, Kon’s maker, keeps him around and uses him to heal paying “guests” (read: pimps him out). Kon doesn’t object, though, since he doesn’t see any purpose to his existence other than being useful. When big, kind-hearted Raizou arrives, he is immediately captivated by Kon and, as he is further exposed to Kon’s sorrow and detachment, falls in love with him.

There are some things ZE does very well, but guiding readers gently into its complicated world isn’t among them. Seven characters are introduced in the first chapter alone, and two more follow by the end of the first volume. That’s a lot of names to try to remember! Many of these characters are one-note, like Kotoha Mitou, who is happy and likes sweets, or Benio, the kami who cosplays and flashes her boobs a lot. The focus is primarily on the relationships, but there are also some hints of things to come, like a trunk of which Waki is fiercely protective and some mysterious spectral attacks that come out of nowhere. This is definitely more plot that I’m accustomed to in a boys’ love series, and I credit it with being both intriguing and ambitious, but also found it to be pretty confusing at times.

The best thing about the series is the relationship between its lead characters. Raizou has nothing but good memories of living with his grandmother, which ground him in a healthy place and provide a contrast to the world Kon has known thus far. To help relieve Kon of his feeling of uselessness, he pledges to become his kotodamashi, an arrangement that’s accepted by the rest of the family. True, Raizou doesn’t possess a magical power of words, but the warm and loving things he says reach Kon anyway and effect a change within him. The intimate scenes between the two of them, filled with eagerness and awkwardness in equal measure, are absolutely fantastic; Yuki Shimizu could give lessons on how to make such moments entirely about the characters and not merely “insert tab A into slot B.”

Shimizu’s artistic style may not be distinctive, but it is at least clean and attractive. Despite the surfeit of characters, I never had any trouble telling them apart. There are a couple of things about the way sexy moments are drawn that amuse me, like inordinately slobbery kisses and the ridiculously huge cone of light representing Raizou’s manly bits, but I positively adore the cover to the second volume. If you look at most boys’ love covers, the two leads are usually clutching each other passionately. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another that looks so genuinely loving.

While ZE has its flaws, I ultimately found it to be enjoyable and thought it improved in the second volume. Shimizu is well known for crafting long series of quality (her Love Mode, published by BLU, clocks in at eleven volumes), so I look forward to seeing where the story goes from here.

ZE is published in English by Digital Manga Publishing; they’ve released two volumes so far. In Japan, seven volumes have been released so far. The series is still ongoing.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

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

Click 4 by Youngran Lee: B-

May 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Carefree player and rich kid Taehyun knows that he feels something for Joonha whether he’s a boy or a girl. But he hasn’t reckoned on the arrival of music star Jinhoo, Joonha’s friend from childhood, who’s back in Seoul to stay. That’s because Joonha seems ready to pick up right where he and his old pal left off. But can a close friendship remain just friendship when one of the boys is now a girl?

Good-natured and oblivious, Jinhoo seems to take it all in stride—that is, until Heewon, the trash-talking crazy girl, confronts him with a devastating revelation…

Review:
There’s not much I can say about this series that I haven’t already. I’m not terribly fond of any of the characters, and yet I find it pretty engrossing. I think it helps that the art is so clean and easy on the eyes and the layouts so simple—it makes it easy to just focus on the emotions and dialogue and zip right on through.

Most of the action in this volume is pretty boring. Taehyun is in love with Joonha, even though he’s unsure of her gender, and she admits to him that she lived for a guy as sixteen years. Taehyun’s minion is inexplicably in love with the violent Heewoon, and does her bidding a few times. Joonha bickers with Jinhoo’s girlfriend. The good stuff is in the interactions between Joonha and Jinhoo, especially a moment they share toward the end where Jinhoo confesses he’s still nervous that Joonha will spontaneously disappear again.

Also, despite the faults of this series, it seriously delivers come cliffhanger time. I think practically every volume has ended with a new step toward Jinhoo’s eventual discovery of Joonha’s secret. This time, I don’t know how can possibly avoid realizing that his old friend is now a girl, but we shall see.

Filed Under: Gender Hijinks, Manhwa Tagged With: ,

A.I. Revolution 5 by Yuu Asami: B-

May 4, 2009 by 1 Comment

Sui Makihara’s father makes robots and has brought his two most advanced creations, Vermillion and Kira, home to learn about humanity from his daughter. Inspired by Makihara’s achievements, but far less scrupulous, his former colleague Sakaki has created AT-6, a robot who lacks the programming that makes it taboo for him to kill humans, to eliminate those people who get in his way.

In volume five, Kira is hired as a bodyguard for a journalist who is investigating a series of killings that he recognizes as AT-6’s handiwork. He ends up confronting Sakaki and nearly killing kim—the penalty for which would be disassembly—but is prevented from doing so by the timely arrival of Vermillion. Other chapters involve the (boring) kidnapping of a visiting foreigner’s daughter, a new scientist at Makihara’s company who thinks Kira is his dream girl, and an unrelated bonus story that’s a tweak on “Cinderella.”

A.I. Revolution is an episodic series, not unlike InuYasha in that most of the nefarious doings can be traced back to the same culprit. Some recurring characters have been introduced and their histories revealed, which is all well and good, but the story seems to be drifting farther and farther away from its original focus. When the series started, Sui was clearly the protagonist. Now she’s been overshadowed by the robots to such an extent that we know more about AT-6 than we know about her. No longer does she impart any lessons about humanity to the two robots; instead, they mostly appear in solo adventures foiling terrorists and kidnappers. It’s pretty disappointing, really.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi, Shoujo Tagged With:

A.I. Revolution 4 by Yuu Asami: B

May 3, 2009 by 3 Comments

From the back cover:
Another robot has been created, but this one is designed to kill! That’s not the only complication—can Vermillion and his friends stop a programmed assassin, restore a widow’s memory and mend a broken family?

Review:
Take a good look at that blurb. They’re not even pretending that Sui is the main character anymore. Seriously, in one chapter, she literally does nothing but eat some cake.

Instead of being strictly episodic, the series now has some recurring characters and, in recent volumes, has been including flashbacks of backstory. This volume introduces AT-6, another robot created by the villainous Sakaki, who lacks the programming that makes it taboo for robots to kill humans. He’s envious of Kira, to whom Sakaki constantly compares him, and seeks to destroy him. Kira ends up removing one part the programming that forces AT-6 to obey Sakaki, but this doesn’t stop the latter from trying to please his creator. We get a glimpse of the possible goodness within him—courtesy of that old manga cliché of saving a child who’s about to get hit by a car—but he’s not redeemed just yet.

The flashback chapter deals with the first test run of Vermillion and the problems that were encountered. Sui’s dad had originally suggested that early on, Vermillion had a habit of coming on to men that necessitated some reprogramming, but this story reveals that it was actually his lack of understanding regarding the difference between living and nonliving creatures that was the real problem. This throws the “kitten rescuing” escapade from volume one into a whole new light. And, by the way, I love that the cat in question has stuck around and shows up, fully-grown, now and then.

Nothing in this volume really excited or amused me, and the less said about the last chapter, wherein someone’s mom (Gasp! A mom!) suffers a head injury and believes she’s eighteen again, the better.

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A.I. Revolution 3 by Yuu Asami: B

May 3, 2009 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
A trip to America turns dangerous when the plane is hijacked! Luckily, everyone’s favorite robots are on board to help out, and they make it to their destination unhindered. All is well until Sui decides to vacation in Hawaii… leaving her robot friends behind!

Review:
Now that I’ve read three volumes of A.I. Revolution, I’ve begun to notice some patterns. First is a prevalence of sickly teenagers. So far, three chapters have featured such characters, from a girl in need of a heart transplant to a teen genius with five years to live to a boy whose father had genetically experimented upon him. The second trend, more all-encompassing than the first, is a glut of motherless teens. I haven’t counted, but maybe six or seven different teen characters have been introduced so far, and though we’ve seen a smattering of dads accompanying them, no mothers have been seen at all. I’m not sure what to make of that.

The stories in this volume are entertaining enough, though I wouldn’t say I loved any of them. I thought it was weird that Sui, the nominal protagonist, played such an insignificant role, though. She appears a little in the first and last chapters, but only long enough to get her purse stolen (leading Vermillion to fall into the trap of a thief) or suffer from a fever while on vacation (leading Vermillion to go on the fritz and make many zany mistakes), and is completely absent from the middle two. Probably this is because Asami, the mangaka, realizes that the robots are far more interesting and compelling characters than Sui is, but it’s worrisome nonetheless. I’d rather the main character receive some development than read about the backstory of the thief who swiped her purse!

A bonus story, “Make-Believe Reality,” is also included in this volume. In it, an arcade owner, tortured by dreams of his suicidal father’s attempts to kill his family, takes an enthusiastic patron, the son of the man responsible for his father’s business failure, hostage in the belief that by exacting revenge, his nightmares will stop. The story is full of metaphors between video games and real life like, “Once you do something irreversible you can’t ever hit the reset button.” Unsurprisingly, it really isn’t very good.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi, Shoujo Tagged With:

A.I. Revolution 2 by Yuu Asami: B+

May 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Explosions, rescues, time machines, mistaken identities and former loves all come together to complicate Sui’s efforts to teach Vermillion—and now Kira—about being human. Not that Sui has much time for the two hot robots, with her bad-tempered friend Aoi wreaking havoc on the city…

Review:
There’s something about this series that reminds me a little of Silver Diamond. You’ve got the gentle human, Sui, teaching two newcomers about humanity, and everyone becoming a sort of family. I can’t help but think that if the casts of these two series got together, they’d all get on fabulously.

The episodic nature of the series continues in this volume, with chapters about a teenage genius in astrophysics, a surly adolescent hacker, et cetera. These stories also deal with some deeper issues, though, like the fact that robots, no matter how much like humans they may seem or how much Sui may like them, are designed to do the things humans don’t want to or can’t do. When Sui protests that Kira and Vermillion are sent into a building wired with multiple bombs, her dad answers, “That’s what they’re for.”

Also like Silver Diamond, this series has a certain quirky sense of humor that I adore. In the story the about astrophysics genius, some of Kira’s long hair gets shot off while he’s protecting her from thugs who want the wormhole research she’d been conducting. He sports a shorter style for a couple of chapters until Sui’s dad, who is responsible for Kira’s bishounen looks, concocts a beverage that causes spontaneous hair growth in robots. After it works on Kira, Vermillion has to try it, too, and when he asks Sui how he looks, she shakes her head in mute horror. He and Kira then shuffle off, dragging their new tresses behind them. I don’t often giggle aloud, but even the memory of that panel is making me grin in retrospect.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi, Shoujo Tagged With:

A.I. Revolution 1 by Yuu Asami: B

May 2, 2009 by Leave a Comment

I reviewed the first volume of this Go! Comi series—about a girl tasked with teaching a robot prototype all about being human—for Comics Should Be Good. You can find that review here.

A.I. Revolution is a bit of an older series with seventeen volumes total. Five volumes have been released in English so far.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi, Shoujo Tagged With:
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