Monkey High! 1 by Shouko Akira: A-

March 9, 2009 by 4 Comments

From the back cover:
Haruna Aizawa thinks that school life is just like a monkey mountain—all the monkeys form cliques, get into fights, and get back together again. The school that she just transferred to is no exception. There’s even a boy called Macharu Yamashita who reminds her of a baby monkey!

It’s hard enough fitting in at a new school while dealing with family problems… Will Haruna remain jaded and distance herself from everyone around her? Or will Macharu win her over with his monkey magic?

Review:
Viz really does have some quality shojo of the high school romance genre. Love*Com, High School Debut, We Were There, and now Monkey High!. Each one that I’ve read, I’ve really liked a lot.

Haruna Aizawa’s father is an upstart politician at the center of a corruption scandal. Because of this, she transferred into a new high school, but the group dynamics—which she compares to a gang of monkeys—are much the same. She strives to keep her distance, but one boy manages to befriend her. Macharu is rather scrawny and not generally someone a beautiful girl like Haruna would consider the ideal boyfriend, but he’s kind, considerate, and sincere and before Haruna realizes it, she’s fallen in love with him. They receive instant support from their classmates who think the mismatch has great potential to be interesting.

Haruna and Macharu are both interesting characters, and it’s awfully refreshing to read a title where the heroine is not earning the affections of the dreamiest, most popular boy in school. Also, Haruna has had boyfriends before, so is not going spazzy over having attracted a boy’s notice. There are some genuinely cute moments between them, and I’m happy to see them become a couple so quickly, as I tend to like stories where getting together is only the beginning of the story, rather than its culmination.

There are some things I found a little annoying, though. The three chapters in this volume deal with the school play, school trip, and Christmas, respectively. Is Akira-sensei just getting the clichés out of the way up front? I’m a little worried. Also, I didn’t find it funny when Haruna and Macharu’s classmates just happened to be eavesdropping on the lead pair at a few crucial moments, interrupting with their antics.

Considering how often I grumble about unfunny attempts at comedy in manga, I wouldn’t blame anyone for concluding that I simply have no sense of humor. I assure you that isn’t the case; I just don’t like it when it isn’t part of the story but instead disrupts it.

Monkey High! was originally published in Japan as Saruyama! and is complete with eight volumes total. Viz is releasing it in English and five volumes have been published so far.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: , ,

Papillon 2 by Miwa Ueda: B-

March 9, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Shy Ageha has long dwelled in the shadow of her beautiful and popular twin sister, Hana. With help from her school’s new guidance counselor, however, she’s begun to transform herself. In this volume, she reconciles with her mother after years of feeling that her parents preferred Hana and even moves on romantically when she realizes that her feelings for Ryûsei might not actually be love.

Papillon is a pretty fun series, and I definitely enjoy seeing family issues get some attention in a manga. The reconciliation between Ageha and her mother is a bit too easily achieved, but when’s the last time you saw a shojo manga heroine enjoy a nice warm hug with her mother? Not often, I’d wager.

On the negative side, I can’t help but feel that the actions of Ichijiku-san, the counselor, are incredibly inappropriate. He has groped Ageha a couple of times (apparently accidentally) and playfully made pretend advances upon her that would get him fired about a hundred times over in the real world. It takes me out of the story that he’s doing these things and is seemingly unconcerned about the occupational repercussions.

What I liked best about volume one—the relationship between Hana and her scheming sister—takes a backseat in this volume, but the way Hana lurks about looking furious as Ageha reconnects with her parents suggests there’ll be more sisterly strife in the future, which is all the reason I need to read on.

Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Moon Boy 6 by Lee YoungYou: C+

March 8, 2009 by 3 Comments

From the back cover:
The Black Rabbit disappears again, this time leaving behind the Fox Tribe’s only means of tracking him! Worried that the tribal elders will discover the truth, student council members Sa-Eun and Jin-Soo split up in a frantic search for their ward… only to find themselves facing off against the most improbable of enemies! After this battle, will the student council ever be the same?

Review:
Wow, things actually happened in this volume. Unfortunately, they weren’t the most coherent of things, but progress is progress, I suppose.

The most major event is that Yu-Da stops acting like he’s still under the foxes’ spell and allies himself with… some people. I cannot tell whether they’re foxes or rabbits or what, but their leader is the same guy (now possessing a schoolgirl’s body) who made it possible for Yu-Da to regain his own consciousness at age fifteen. They’ve liberated a bunch of low-level, animal-like foxes and have some kind of agenda. That’s about as specific as I can be about it, since it’s all very muddled.

Belatedly, some backstory is superimposed upon a couple of the foxes on the student council, but it’s rather too little too late. It would’ve been nice if either of these two had had much personality before one ends up betraying the other, or if we’d had some notion of the real depth of their history together before that happened.

Moon Boy really has a making-it-up-as-I-go-along kind of feel to it. True, we’ve seen a couple of members of this new gang for a little while now, and heard about the leader, too, but it just doesn’t feel… final. This volume is a lot more serious than those before it, which I appreciate, but I’d like it more if I could feel confident that we’re approaching a planned-out ending, and not just veering randomly down another ambling path.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manhwa Tagged With:

Moon Boy 5 by Lee YoungYou: C

March 7, 2009 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Having survived the battle with the Soon-La renegades, Myung-Ee can’t remember anything about the fight! In her quest to know what really happened, she finds herself crossing paths with Sa-Eun more than once. Though he stays silent about the battle, he lets slip a shocking secret about himself to his rabbit adversary! Meanwhile, Yu-Da has returned safely with the help of two mysterious friends… who appear to be intent on wreaking havoc on both the Rabbit and Fox tribes! Is the Black Rabbit slipping away from Myung-Ee for good?

Review:
The plot of this series really is meandering now. Here we are in volume five, and nothing has really happened. Yes, Myung-Ee’s skills are developing. But otherwise Yu-Da’s exactly where he was (in the Fox tribe’s clutches) and nothing has progressed at all.

We do get clarification that Yu-Da really is faking the sunny personality he has around the foxes, since the spell on him wore off when he turned fifteen. This isn’t really inconsistent with what’s come before, but I don’t even care, since at least it makes Yu-Da’s present situation clear at last. One does wonder, however, if Yu-Da is himself and has all these powers, why doesn’t he, like, escape?

It seems like there’s less of the unfunny comedy in this volume, but maybe that’s because the last few chapters actually weren’t that bad and I’ve managed to forget some of the stupid crap that happened early on. One thing that bugs me is that one of the newly-arrived rabbit reinforcements is really about eleven years old but is taking a growing potion in order to attend high school with Myung-Ee and the others. And yet he’s drawn in a “sexy” way in some of the splash pages. It’s disconcerting.

Some other random things bugged me, too. At one point, Myung-Ee resolves that she’s not being true to herself if she doesn’t tell Yu-Da’s one secret advantage (that the foxes’ spell on him wore off) to one of the foxes. Why the hell?! Thankfully, she doesn’t do it (yet). Also, there are some really annoying fan girls of Yu-Da and his fox buddy, with whom Myung-Ee has clashed several times. But yet she can send a text message to this fan club president, meaning she’s actually asked for this girl’s cell phone number? Perhaps I’m thinking too much about some stupid gag, but it irks me.

Some new characters are introduced and some new facts are revealed about existing characters, but I really just do not care. Probably you won’t either, so I’ll spare you the details.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manhwa Tagged With:

The Gentleman and the Lady by Kazumi Tohno: B+

March 6, 2009 by 3 Comments

Book description:
The six romantic, sensual shorts in The Gentleman and the Lady reveal that love is often surprising and always unavoidable. There may be more to a friendship than meets the eye, as true love is sometimes hidden where a girl least expects it.

This endearing collection by Kazumi Tohno opens with the title story, introducing the “chummy threesome”: Kotoko, Katsuto, and Komon. These close-knit friends get along very well… but even the best of friends are put to the test when they’re all stuck in a love triangle with each other!

Review:
Connie reviewed this title for Manga Recon and since it sounded like something I’d enjoy, I decided to check it out. Ultimately, I don’t think I liked it quite as much as she did, but I did have fun reading it.

This is an eclectic collection of stories, half focusing on romance and half not. First up in the romance division is “The Gentleman and the Lady,” which is about a trio of friends who’ve known each other since high school and the evolving relationships between them. “Angel Time” is about a woman who was discovered by an executive (who claimed to love her) and brought to Japan to star in some commercials for his company, only to learn that he has a wife and family. Lastly, “X” is about a guy who thinks the woman he loves is lying to him so he becomes deceitful himself, creating a fake persona (X) to try to find out the truth. Of these, I probably liked “X” the best, not because of its plot but because of the protagonist’s conflicted feelings.

On the non-romantic side, there’s “Santa Tour” and “Marine Blue,” both of which deal with kids who are too jaded to believe in Santa Claus. In the latter, Santa and Jesus are total BFFs, by the way. Also in this category is “Dr. Urashima’s Treasure Chest,” a short sci-fi story about a couple who invents a time machine and is then prevailed upon by their government to change the shape of history. This one was my favorite and I wish it could’ve been longer, even though the end is still quite nifty.

Each story is pretty mellow in feel, and Connie was dead-on when she described the emotion as understated. None of the stories ends with a neatly tied-up resolution, but each still manages to give closure in a way where one can imagine what came next. The art is retro by today’s standards, but the only time I felt it distracted from the story was in “The Gentleman and the Lady,” when two of the characters’ (horrible) matching outfits is a plot point.

The Gentleman and the Lady is an online exclusive available at NETCOMICS.com.

Filed Under: Josei, Manga, Short Stories Tagged With:

Moon Boy 4 by Lee YoungYou: C-

March 6, 2009 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Myung-Ee succeeds in enraging the student council—especially Sa-Eun—by confronting them about Yu-Da. But when the Black Rabbit is kidnapped during the school festival, she finds herself transported to a strange place… with none other than Sa-Eun! As an attack from an unexpected assailant forces the two enemies into a corner, will they be able to put their differences aside and fight for their lives together?!

Review:
Ugh. School festival. If I never read another school festival chapter ever again, it’ll be too soon. This one is especially stupid, since it’s a transparent attempt to get the two male leads in drag.

There are more problems than just that, however.
1. The character Mok-Hee is utterly useless. He’s ostensibly an accomplished spy but does nothing except ogle women. I gather this is supposed to be funny, but it’s just really, really stupid.

2. The story is beginning to show internal inconsistencies. In an earlier volume, it was mentioned that Yu-Da’s transformation from happy-go-lucky (the personality imprinted upon him by the fox tribe elders) and his true self takes a long time. Now he can seemingly switch back and forth with ease, and there’s some throwaway line about how the spell on him lifted when he turned seventeen. Also, all we had ever heard about Yu-Da’s precious liver was that it would be at its most effective (in its immortality-granting powers) when he reaches adulthood. Suddenly, a new reason for the wait is introduced: now his liver is supposedly “deathly poisonous” until fully developed.

3. Towards the end there’s a fight scene and I have absolutely no idea what is going on.

This is the first volume published by Yen Press and they’ve done a good job replicating Ice Kunion’s packaging. Too bad the cover image is so garish. I can’t even begin to describe it; we’d need James Lileks for the job.

The only slightly good scene is when Myung-Ee confronts the foxes about what they’re doing to Yu-Da, since he is supposedly their friend. Any merits are completely obliterated by the sudden, laughably bad crying jag her words elicit from one of the foxes, however.

I had hoped this series would get better as it went along, but now it seems it’s on the opposite path.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manhwa Tagged With:

Heaven’s Will by Satoru Takamiya: B

March 5, 2009 by 4 Comments

From the back cover:
Sudou Mikuzu has a very special talent—she can see ghosts. And because of this predisposition, she’s become a magnet for all sorts of unwelcome monsters. Luckily for her she’s just met Seto, a friendly, cross-dressing young exorcist. Sudou needs protection from all the creepy phantoms bugging her, and Seto needs to practice his exorcism skills. Consequently, the pair decides to team up and help each other. In return, Sudou promises to bake a cake every time a ghost gets zapped!

Review:
There are many good things about Heaven’s Will, but one profoundly disappointing one that I suspect was not actually the will of the mangaka.

This is the story of Mikuzu Sudou, a girl with the habit of fleeing from things that frighten her. What frightens her? Anything she can’t understand, which includes ghosts and boys. One day, while fleeing from the clutches of a creepy stalker, she seeks refuge in a house that her classmates regard as being haunted. There she meets the lovely cross-dressing Seto, whom she initially takes for a girl, and his vampire companion, Kagari. Seto offers to dispel the spirits, or oni, that are bothering her and though he originally wants to charge a hefty fee, settles for payment in daily cakes.

Throughout the course of the story, Mikuzu works on her tendency to run away from things and actively tries to understand strange things as well as face up to them. Seto, who doesn’t frighten her due to his cute appearance, gives encouragement but also works as a subject, since Mikuzu wants to know more about him, even though he seems very strange. When she learns that Seto plans to give his body over to the spirit of the sister who died on his account, she works hard to dissuade him and refuses to be distracted by the silly case of a haunted piano. Kagari also has rather sad reasons for hanging around Seto, which Mikuzu does her best to understand, as well.

There are a couple of little things that bugged me—the part with Mikuzu’s stalker wraps up awfully abruptly and though in the short story that spawned the truncated series she says there’s no one she can tell about her ghost-seeing abilities she later has some random anonymous friend who’s forwarding clients in need of exorcism to her. (Mikuzu has agreed to serve as bait for oni so that Seto can profit by exorcising them.) Also, the part where the spirit of Seto’s sister appears is kind of random. On the positive side, I really like Takamiya’s art. It’s clean, pretty, and very expressive.

Although I think Takamiya does a good job with Mikuzu’s development, the story is unfortunately limited to one volume and doesn’t go any further. The final chapter is moderately satisfying, with Mikuzu hopeful and resolved to keep Seto from essentially killing himself on his sister’s behalf, but I really wanted more. In her author’s notes, Takamiya says, “Unfortunately, it ended without me being able to even do half of what I had planned.” And that’s a real shame. I could’ve happily read about these characters for quite a while.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo, Supernatural Tagged With: ,

Moon Boy 3 by Lee YoungYou: C+

March 3, 2009 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
For the first time, Myung-Ee falls into a real fight against the Fox Tribe. She is determined to do whatever she can to protect Yu-Da from all the hungry foxes, but instead she encounters the “Black” Yu-Da! How can this be? Is Yu-Da’s memory back, or was he just faking?!

Review:
The phrase “hungry foxes” conjures to mind the Festrunk brothers from SNL’s early days, who were always on the prowl to meet some “swinging American foxes.”

What a mixed bag this volume is. While I used to kind of like Ya-ho, the pet cat of Ho-Rang (the young-looking kendo captain/elite rabbit warrior) who can turn into a girl with poor language skills, she really got on my nerves in this volume. Absolutely none of the attempts at comedy succeeded in amusing me. This includes Mok-hee, a pervy fellow who up ’til now has been imprisoned in a mystical cigarette or something, but now gets set free to work his surveillance mojo and report on Myung-Ee, since she basically announced to the fox-filled Student Council that she’s one of their prey in the previous volume. All of his antics are excruciatingly boring.

Also seemingly worse is the art. There’s one action scene where I cannot tell at all what’s going on. There’s a streak of movement and a “SHUKK!” sound effect followed by spectator reactions, so obviously something happened, but I couldn’t tell what. Also, somewhere towards the end of the last volume, Myung-Ee seems to’ve grown one of those stupid moe plumes atop her head.

And yet, out of this jumble emerges a couple of chapters that are actually pretty good. Mok-hee summons a bunch of lower-level foxes to attack Myung-Ee just at the same moment that Yu-Da has gone to inquire about the Kendo Club’s festival plans. Myung-Ee witnesses Yu-Da go into “black” mode and essentially cause all of his opponents’ chests to explode. When Yu-Da later tries to erase her memory, he’s unsuccessful.

In the next chapter, after the aforementioned confusing combat scene, there’s a rather nifty bit where a wounded guy is thinking about how much he loves Myung-Ee but won’t tell her until he’s more of a man, and meanwhile the crying Myung-Ee is thinking how horrible she is for being more concerned about Yu-Da than the guy who got hurt on her behalf.

It’s these scattered moments of almost goodness that keep this series from being intolerably dull.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manhwa Tagged With:

Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka 2 by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka: A

March 2, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Robots and humans continue to die in this second volume of Urasawa’s re-imagining of Osamu Tezuka’s classic Astro Boy story, “The Greatest Robot on Earth.” Gesicht travels to Japan where he meets with Atom, another of the seven strongest robots allegedly being targeted. After accessing Gesicht’s memory chip, Atom is able to assist the Japanese police as they work a similar case and discovers the common factor between the human victims. Meanwhile, Gesicht continues to warn other robots on the list while questioning mysterious gaps in his own memory.

While volume one did a good job of setting up the plot and the world, volume two really gets the ball rolling. There’s action and plot twists aplenty, as well as answers to questions that only serve to beget more questions. I certainly can’t complain when a story proceeds to go somewhere, but I still missed the “robot interest” stories that made the first volume so stellar. There were a few touching moments scattered throughout, but mostly the focus was on plot advancement.

Urasawa’s art is uniformly excellent, as usual. I’m a big fan of the futuristic city scenes, but perhaps my favorite thing in this volume is actually Atom’s hair. No matter which way he turned, Tezuka’s incarnation of Astro Boy always had two triangles of hair poking up. Atom’s case is far subtler, more like tufts really, but it’s definitely there. I love attention to detail like that.

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

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

Moon Boy 2 by Lee YoungYou: C+

March 1, 2009 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Myung-Ee decides to rescue Yu-Da from the fox tribe! She begins by journeying to Junghyun mountain to join the Soon-La army. But first she must pass a test of pain and endurance. Meanwhile, more secrets are revealed about the “kind and gentle” Yu-Dai…

Review:
This volume is pretty boring overall, but had just enough stuff going on that I have some interest in continuing. Partly, I have this wish that all the stupid “comedy” bits will be dispensed with at some point as the story grows more serious, but that’s probably futile.

Anyways, more is explained about the Soon-La army, then Myung-Ee heads to the training academy. As an “earth rabbit,” more like a human that other rabbits, her long ears do not sprout when she gets there, but she still manages to be super awesome and conjure a sword in a matter of minutes where other students have taken a year to do the same. That part is standard fantasy fare, so it’s okay, but the instructor is a crossdresser, so that had to be milked for all that it was worth and then some.

The other big plot revolves around the mystery fox girl (Seo-Wha) from the last volume, who has an obsessive love for one of the foxes guarding Yu-Da. She’s a pain in the ass to everyone the entire volume, yet the only worthwhile thing she actually does is cause Yu-Da to show that there’s some other, powerful, personality sharing his body that Yu-Da is probably not aware of.

Moon Boy is a quick read, but I’d like it better if the story itself were more streamlined. None of the characters are well-developed, yet more are still being added. Plus, the art is not my cup of tea. Still, it sometimes surprises me, as with one very nice panel of Myung-Ee and Seo-Wha as black silhouettes against the lights of a city at night. Overall, I don’t hate this series, but neither would I particularly recommend it.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Manhwa Tagged With:
« Previous Page
Next Page »