Case Closed 25 by Gosho Aoyama: B

September 22, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I’d never just jumped into the middle of a series before, but the nature of Case Closed made it an entirely painless process. The “case briefing” laid out the basic premise (including a helpful list of detecting equipment), and it was pretty easy to grasp the essential relationships between the characters. Coming in at the beginning of a murder mystery at a skating rink also meant that I wasn’t totally lost story-wise.

There are two complete cases in this volume, each featuring a slightly different cast of supporting characters. I found it impossible to venture a guess at the culprits, since at least one murder method was insanely convoluted, but was entertained nonetheless. The way Jimmy had of attributing the solutions to an adult detective was slightly silly, but I did enjoy it when he’d be forced to feign childish exuberance over some random thing in order to bring about the discovery of a crucial bit of evidence.

In the final two chapters, Jimmy and some friends were more concerned with escaping criminals rather than apprehending them, and in the course of events, Jimmy was seriously injured. The volume ended on a cliffhanger, but with thirty or so more volumes of this series left to go, even I know enough not to be worried.

I definitely enjoyed what I read here and am intrigued enough that I have already made plans to acquire the first volume so I can try reading this series from the beginning.

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

Filed Under: Manga, Mystery, Shounen Tagged With:

Wanted by Matsuri Hino: C+

September 22, 2008 by Leave a Comment

In the late seventeenth century, orphaned Armeria sings with a traveling musical troupe. Luce, the nephew of the wealthy governor at whose estate she is performing, is the first aristocrat to treat her kindly, and when he is subsequently captured by pirates, the young girl resolves to find and rescue him. Eight years later, Armeria has finally found the ship of the pirate responsible and, disguising herself as a boy, ventures aboard to find out what has become of her first love.

If you’re reminded of the plot of The Princess Bride, then you should be, because there are some similarities. Wanted is a far less coherent and satisfying story, however. It’s more like a series of vignettes—the one with the navy, the one with the map to a rare musical score—than anything else, and cuts off with disappointing abruptness.

It definitely has some good points: secrets that would normally be used to prolong angst are revealed early on, there are some genuinely fun moments, and the deckhands are pretty entertaining. On the negative side, Skulls is fond of nearly ravishing Armeria and tells her she’s useless far too often for my liking. The fact that she often proves him right by constantly requiring rescue just makes things worse.

As a final note, the bonus story at the end should be avoided at all costs; it manages to be confusing and dull simultaneously, which is not a winning combination.

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

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Bleach 24 by Tite Kubo: B-

September 21, 2008 by 5 Comments

From the back cover:
Ichigo and the Soul Reapers wage a furious battle against the Arrancars who are attacking Karakura Town. But this enemy is unlike anything they have ever fought before, and these aren’t even the strongest of the Arrancars! If Ichigo and his friends can barely face them, how can they hope to fight off the elite Arrancar warriors, the dreaded Espada?

Review:
Despite leaving me confused in several places, this volume was an improvement over the previous one.

When last we left off, several of the Soul Reapers were fighting Arrancars, and most of this volume dealt with the conclusions of those battles. The fight scenes were not as clear as usual, and there were several times that I couldn’t quite understand what was going on, aside from someone getting wounded somehow. There were also seemingly too many Rukias running around. I assume that would make sense if I remembered more of what happened in the previous volume.

Things only became somewhat cool to me when more of the Arrancar hierarchy was revealed. Yes, it’s silly that the top ten of them are numbered in terms of descending power rank (and have the numbers on their bodies), but at least it provides some idea of structure for the foes to vanquish. I’m still pretty unclear on all the Arrancar and Vizard stuff, but guys with numbers on them I can understand. Speaking of Vizards, another potentially cool thing is that Ichigo seemed to be on the verge of asking them for help in controlling his inner Hollow.

Random note: I am amused when combatants are miraculously able to hold in all the blood from their unseen wounds until their opponent has fallen, at which point they suddenly go “SPLAKK!” and spurt from dozens of places.

I was prepared to drop this series if I disliked this volume as much as the last, but it was decent enough to buy a little more time.

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

Short Program by Mitsuru Adachi: A-

September 21, 2008 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
The comic-book short story is one of the most difficult areas of storytelling, but Adachi handles the challenge with deceptive ease. His low-key approach belies the power of the emotions his characters portray. The resolution of Adachi’s stories are logical, dramatic, true-to-life, and completely unpredictable.

Span the range of human relationships in eight acts!
* Who’s the little guy who’s always getting into scraps?
* Is there a reason the track star is setting the bar higher?
* Is the nice guy across the way as nice as he seems?
* Will the detective track down his dream girl?
* She passes him every day on the street. Can he meet her?
* It’s the school reunion—are the old flames dead?
* How does the repairman compare to the heartthrob?
* Is the solution to gang rivalries worse than the problem?

Review:
This was my first time reading any Mitsuru Adachi, and I enjoyed the experience. I liked every story in the collection, though some more than others. Most had to do with romance in some fashion, some in a straightforward way where a couple got together at the end, and others in ways that subverted the reader’s expectations. I tended to prefer the latter variety.

My favorite story was one that seemed like it was involving romance—a boy and girl were out on a date at an amusement park and were having a conversation while on various rides. Their apartments faced each other across the street, and she thanked him for a few occasions where he was able to help her due to looking out of his window at just the right time. It totally did not end how I expected it to, and was quite awesome.

Another favorite was a story about a track star who kept setting her high jump goal higher to correspond with the height of the guy she liked. Instead of the story being told from her perspective, it featured said guy and his friend sitting in an apartment watching her in a televised event and figuring out how she felt about him.

About the only thing I didn’t like was the tendency of the stories to break the fourth wall. Adachi appeared in a couple of stories to make random comments, his name was mentioned by a character once, and a couple of other characters referenced the fact that they were in a manga. I really don’t find that kind of thing cute or funny.

Through the majesty of interlibrary loans, I have managed to acquire a copy of the elusive Short Program 2, which I’ll be reviewing in the next couple of days. Though a third compilation was released in Japan, it has, alas, never been licensed for North American distribution.

Filed Under: Manga, Seinen, Short Stories, Shoujo, Shounen Tagged With: ,

Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind 2 by Hayao Miyazaki: A+

September 19, 2008 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Humanity, in its hubris, has precipitated a devastating environmental disaster. Armed with clumsy flying gunships, Princess Nausicaä and her allies battle over the last of the world’s precious natural resources.

Yet this is no war saga, but rather the story of the coming-of-age of a pacifist.

As her troops advance, the gentle princess mourns both her own and her enemy’s losses, and takes the time to rescue two orphaned children. Nausicaä also shares an empathic bond with the giant, mutated insects who evolved after the destruction of the ecosystem. When the mysterious, intelligent Ohmu open their hearts to her, will Nausicaä be able to interpret their urgent warning?

Review:
The plot gets a whole lot more complicated in this volume, and it’d be folly to attempt to describe it. Instead I’ll just talk about the things I liked the most.

I mentioned the Emperor’s daughter, Kushana, in the review for the first volume, but I didn’t talk about the fact that she’s quite the badass herself. She has trained a company of soldiers who are fiercely loyal to her because she cares for their welfare, joins in the fighting herself, and is a brilliant strategist. She doesn’t panic in the face of an insect attack and when her advisor is injured, she slings him over her shoulder and carries him to safety. What a woman!

Nausicaä spends a lot of time in Kushana’s company in the first half of the volume, since they are traveling in the same direction. In exchange for releasing some prisoners, Kushana extracts a promise from Nausicaä to fight alongside her in a battle, leading to an amazing battle scene spanning around sixty pages. It’s masterful, really, drawn in a way that manages to be both innovative and clear.

This has also become a multi-sided conflict now, and though the leaders of the two main powers are certainly unpleasant fellows, I like how Nausicaä and her compatriots keep encountering decent people on all sides of the equation. This volume in particular demonstrated how futile the war is, and how the real threat everyone should be worried about is the encroaching forest, which strives to cleanse the land of poisons invented and inflicted by man. If I were feeling really profound, I’d say one theme is that the enemy isn’t “them,” it’s us.

If you like your science fiction thought-provoking with a dash of political maneuvering, you owe it to yourself to check out this series.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi Tagged With:

Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind 1 by Hayao Miyazaki: A

September 15, 2008 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Humanity, in its hubris, has precipitated a devastating ecological disaster. Flourishing industrial civilizations have been swallowed up and Earth is covered with the Sea of Corruption, an enormous forest of fungi that releases a miasma of poisonous spores into the air.

Nausicaä, a gentle young princess, has an empathic bond with the giant mutated insects that evolved in the wake of the destruction of the ecosystem. Traveling by cumbersome flying ship, on the backs of giant flightless birds, and perched atop her beloved glider, Nausicaä and her allies must negotiate peace between kingdoms battling over the last of the world’s precious natural resources…

Review:
Here’s another manga classic I am reading for the first time. I’ve never even seen the movie, so I’m coming into the Nausicaä experience completely unspoiled, which is nice.

This is another one of those post-apocalyptic sci-fi stories with a complicated plot. Essentially, Nausicaä’s father is the Chieftain of their people. His only surviving child, she is set to take over after his death, even though nobody has ever heard of a female Chieftain before. Her people all adore her, though, because not only is she courageous and kind, she is also extremely badass. Her ability to sense the wind makes her a phenomenal pilot, she’s quick on her feet, and also good with weapons. I like her a lot.

I like the art, too—it’s delicate and detailed, favoring smaller panels over larger ones. Sometimes this results in pretty dense pages, and it’s usually important to pay attention to background things, so it’s a slower read than most manga. Some of the characters look alike—the “old men of the castle” who attend Nausicaä are pretty indistinguishable from one another—but others really stand out from the crowd, like the ambitious Kurotowa, advisor to the Emperor’s daughter.

The story moves along at a brisk pace and is easy to follow, even with frequent changes of venue and shifting political alliances. It kind of reminds me of Basara, what with the gutsy heroine gathering contacts and allies in various places. There’s a definite environmental message, but it’s not preachy. I’m really enjoying it so far and will be reading the rest of the series in the coming days.

A note on editions: The edition I am reading is the Perfect Collection, which condenses the series’ original seven volumes into four. Later, Viz reprinted the series in a seven-volume Editor’s Choice edition with unflipped art and the original sepia-toned ink. The library didn’t have the newer version, alas.

Filed Under: Manga, Sci-Fi Tagged With:

Love*Com 8 by Aya Nakahara: B+

August 30, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Risa and Ôtani are finally going out, but she’s uncertain about how she’s supposed to act around him now. She’s got this preconceived notion of what a girlfriend should be, and internally beats herself up each time she fails to live up to that ideal. It helps some when Ôtani sets aside his natural reticence and introduces her to people as his girlfriend, but he still hasn’t articulated exactly why he loves her, and she’s having a hard time imagining what he could see in her.

Later, Ôtani’s neighbor, Mimi, finds out he’s got a new girlfriend and is furious. The beautiful and tall middle schooler has harbored a crush on him for years, but abandoned hope because she thought he only liked tiny girls. A lot of Mimi angst follows, and while it’s creditable that Risa sympathizes with her plight, the way this new character suddenly dominates the story is rather irksome.

Eventually, though, I realized that her purpose is to solidify the main couple’s relationship. We see that she really poses no threat to them at all, that Ôtani’s feelings never waver, and that he and Risa really are made for each other, rough edges and all. Having fulfilled this destiny, may she now go quietly away.

While this particular volume didn’t focus on the leads quite as much as I would’ve liked, it still excels at depicting the insecurities and awkwardness of this period in a relationship. That’s no surprise, since Love*Com has nailed many other aspects of first love. I’m sure it will continue to do so in the volumes to come.

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

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Love*Com 7 by Aya Nakahara: A

August 26, 2008 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Risa is sick of having her emotions yanked back and forth by her feelings for Ôtani, so she decides once and for all to just be friends. But when she tells Ôtani that she’s getting over him, he freaks out and tells her not to! Has the comedy duo turned into a couple?

Review:
It’s a special book that can make me grin like a great big doofus at least twice and get all teary-eyed by the final scene. That’s just how good this series is, and in particular this volume, where things finally, finally go where everyone has been wanting them to go.

It’s a slow build up throughout the volume, with some fantastic scenes along the way. Each chapter brings the two leads closer and closer together, and though I thought the terrific moment between them at her birthday party (see above re: doofus) was the apex of awesomeness, the final chapter surpasses it. Nakahara is excellent at body language in these scenes; I particularly love how Ôtani shyly ducks his head and turns away after giving Risa a little kiss.

Also, I’ve never been a fan of the insults these two have hurled at each other in the past, so I was happy that in this volume, I could really see them trying not to do that anymore. It helped that Ôtani actually said something encouraging to Risa, so she had that to rely on when his subsequent actions might’ve previously sent her into a tizzy.

I love that, now that they’re finally a couple, it doesn’t feel like the series ought to be over. It feels like “where will it go from here?”

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Boys Over Flowers 16 by Yoko Kamio: A

August 26, 2008 by Leave a Comment

From the back cover:
Tsukasa’s 18th birthday doesn’t go smoothly at all! Tsukushi is introduced to Kaede, Tsukasa’s mother, by way of falling over a table and causing a scene. Kaede tells her to get out, but Tsukasa defends her by declaring that she is precious to him. Thus begins a three-sided war between the three most headstrong people you’ve ever seen! Tsukushi and Tsukasa get away for a while and spend some time on Tsukasa’s boat, but they can’t hide from Kaede forever…

Review:
A lot of awesome stuff happens in this volume!

Firstly, Kaede is such a great antagonist. Not only does she create strife for the two leads, she also sets off the sorrow in the lives of the other rich characters around. In the previous volume, Soujirou talked about how he cannot choose his own spouse, and now it seems that Tsubaki might have a lost love of her own. I hope that gets explored in future volumes.

Secondly, so many of the supporting cast get awesome things to do. Tsubaki has now completely redeemed herself for her bizarre actions of the past and is acting as Tsukasa’s champion of sorts, helping him get away from the party and then expressing concern at what their mother has planned for him. Tsukushi’s mom is also (very briefly) cool, showing for an instant a strong resemblance to her daughter.

Lastly, I loved the scenes with Tsukushi and Tsukasa on the boat, especially the part where they’re fishing and discussing their families. She also finally gives him the homemade cookies she made as a birthday gift; the awesome thing is that he’s still proudly showing them off two chapters later.

Kaede’s plot involves accelerating plans for Tsukasa’s arranged marriage with Shigeru, a tomboyish girl who is the first serious rival for Tsukasa’s affections that Tsukushi has faced. She’s likable and also seems to be amenable to the arrangement, not letting Tsukasa off the hook so easily.

All in all, a very solid volume through and through. Alas, I’m now caught up with my original reading plan (two per month, finishing just as the final volume comes out next June) so here’s where I’ll be pausing until next month. It’s soooo tempting to just keep plowing on, as this series is seriously addictive, but I expect I’ll regret it afterwards during the long wait between volumes.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,

Boys Over Flowers 15 by Yoko Kamio: B+

August 24, 2008 by 1 Comment

From the back cover:
Junpei has promised to protect Tsukushi and always be there for her. His promise comes just in time, since Tsukushi has been given another of the infamous “red slips,” the mark of someone targeted for abuse. Meanwhile, Akira and Soujirou are desperately looking for Tsukasa, who has been gone for days. It turns out that Junpei harbors a terrible grudge against Tsukasa and is using Tsukushi as bait to get him! This has shockingly violent results. Later, Tsukushi gets dressed up and attends Tsukasa’s birthday party. Little does she realize the implications that attendance has!

Review:
Um, thanks for ruining any surprise anyone might’ve had regarding Junpei’s intentions, back cover blurb!

Anyways, the most important thing to come out of Junpei and his grudge is that Tsukasa submits to a beating from several guys he could’ve handily defeated because to fight back would’ve put Tsukushi in jeopardy. I love that when he arrives, she tearfully cries, “Why did you come?!” and he advises her to keep her eyes shut so she won’t have to witness the beating.

There follows a chapter that must’ve been a lot of fun to read in its serialized form. Tsukushi has a dream that Tsukasa has died from his injuries, and the next few pages seem to support this notion, with the F4 pretending to grieve, et cetera. She’s furious at the jest, of course, but it leads into another sweet scene between the two leads. Then the other members of the F4 try to convince Tsukushi again to give him a chance as a boyfriend, but she blurts out something derogatory and flees.

The effort to flesh out Akira and Soujirou continues, as well. When Tsukushi is invited to Tsukasa’s birthday party and is freaking out about possibly being introduced to his scary mother as his fiancée, Soujirou points out that sons of rich families are never allowed to marry a girl of their own choosing, so she should just relax because there’s no chance she’d ever be able to marry Tsukasa anyway. I thought that was a neat, kind of subtle way to place a new obstacle in the path of their relationship. And then, of course, Tsukasa’s mom becomes the physical embodiment of said obstacle.

These middle volumes are showing quite a consistent level of quality. Gone are the things like basketball showdowns and I hope they never return. We’re also heading into what was the final arc of the anime, so soon I’ll be into material that I’m completely unspoiled on.

My final thought comes in the form of a favorite quote. Tsukasa has, once again, gotten himself fired up over something at the drop of a hat, and one of the other F4 (possibly Akira) quips, “I wish my water heater worked like him.” Hee. So do I.

Filed Under: Manga, Shoujo Tagged With: ,
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