There are two kinds of romance novel. One is the kind that everyone thinks of when they read the words “romance novel,” which is to say, romance novels targeted at adult women. These are often generically called “Harlequin novels” after the famous publisher of the genre. The other kind of romance novel are for men. They are packaged as action-adventure books, but are always as much about the hero and the beautiful woman getting together as any Harlequin. We call these “Clive Cussler novels.”

You can tell the difference between romance written for men and for women by the way they use language. A woman’s romance might describe a scene, “His bronze skin glinted in the evening sun as he closed his brawny arms around her slim waist and full hips.” Whereas Clive Cussler would describe the scene this way, “His bronze skin glinted in the evening sun as he closed his brawny arms around her slim waist and full hips.”

…

Many of the manga I read are for older teens, young adults. They aren’t *quite* children and they aren’t quite adult, really. I find myself reading these manga, noticing how often random bits of service are wedged into scenes that make basically no sense at all. In effect, all these manga sound like this to me:

“Hey Carol, I wanted to get those sales reports to you by End of Business day, but spent the afternoon thinking what Kim would like like in a bikini instead.”

“Oh, hey, Bob, thanks, I’m going to need those reports for a presentation I’m making in front of the marketing team. I was working on it, but spent the afternoon wondering what David looked like in the shower.”

…

Which brings me, at last, to A Certain Scientific Railgun. In the first scene, which begins with narrative expositions, so the audience not familiar with the world from To Aru Majutsu no Index, the mother ship franchise for this series, can know enough to get by. This is enhanced slightly by  more exposition by the teacher who is saying stuff that presumably the students in her class all know.

We are then introduced to Misaka Mikoto, one of the objectively most powerful people in the book’s world. In the shower. I’m not saying it’s pandering, I’m saying it’s *distracting*.

In any case, we quickly meet Mikoto, her admiring, pervtastic kouhai Shirai Kuroko, Kuroko’s fellow member of Judgement Uiharu Kazari and her friend Saten Ruiko. These four girls are the series’ greatest strength. They like each other, they respect each other. Kuroko and Mikoto could easily treat Saten and Uiharu, who have neither power nor money, as dirt…but they do not. They are kind – not pitying kind, genuinely kind. Mikoto and Kuroko are…nice.

The story is weaker than that in the anime, but easy enough to follow and if you don’t much care that Index is not in English, so we are indeed coming in in the middle of the story, then it should be no particular hurdle.

Yuri is thin, one-sided and a bit tired, but Kuroko’s antics cover what is probably a genuine desire for Mikoto.

As this is a Seven Seas book, all the technicals are quite good. Once again a very authentic reading experience.

Look, take your brain out of your head and watch the girls fight the bad guys. It’s fun.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 7

I think this series is a decent manga, but it made a terrific anime. I’m not sure what I would make of this manga had I not seen the anime, but the one that that indubitably worked in both is the friendship of the four girls.

Many thanks to brand-new  Okazu Hero Steven M for sponsoring today’s review!

Okay, so, now you’re wondering – you’re about to take off for summer vacation and if you can’t bring The Last Uniform with you to read, what can you bring?

Let me suggest you throw a copy of Silent Mobius, Volume 3 into your carry-on.

Silent Mobius is good, solid old-school sci-fi, and this volume has spaceships and computers and very obviously adult women who are sometimes in various states of undress, but you can be darn certain that they are adult.

Volume 3 picks up where Volume 2 left off, with Yuki’s backstory. I’d forgotten how honestly unsatisfying the ending of that is. It’s not that Yuki doesn’t step up, but it reeks of Tuxedo Mask on a lightpole shouting, “Do it, Sailor Moon!”

From there we move into Lebia’s story. I consider Lebia to be one of the most interesting characters in AMP. She lives alone with her AI in a luxurious apartment, with an indoor pool. On a cop’s salary? You can’t tell me Lebia isn’t manipulating playing the markets. Lebia also strikes me as a bona fide hedonist, one of very few non-evil characters I’ve ever seen who is. For that alone, I love her. Then she, like everyone at AMP, turns out to be extra super awesome, and we like her even more. ^_^

The translation in Udon’s new edition has settled down nicely. I still don’t quite feel that each character has a unique voice, but that’s common in translated material…everyone sounds like the translator. More importantly, the translation reads smoothly, the color pictures look good and in general, as women in uniform kicking ass go…this series is still as wonderful as ever.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 8
Service – 2 (There is nothing loser-y in appreciating adult women’s bodies.)
Yuri – 0

Overall – 8

Still no Yuri,  but we haven’t gotten to Rally yet. Get your Yuri Goggles ready though….

I just love the heck out of this series. I’m going to go and play Kindan no Pense over and over and over. Oh and by the way, Asamiya Kia is on Twitter and he’s very talkative there – go tell him how much you like Silent Mobius!

 I’m taking the next few days off writing for Okazu – nothing bad, promise. ^_^ Luckily we have a few Guest Reviewers who have stepped in to give me a much-needed break. Today we have a new Guest Reviewer- Ayra – with a look at Ichiroh!, Volume 4. Let’s give Ayra a warm welcome! Yaaayy!!!

Nanako and Akane are modern day ronin: Students who failed to enter university after high school, and are struggling for a second chance during the following year. The first three volumes of Ichiroh! consisted of various hijinks  as Nanako and crew go through that year, meeting new people, facing minor issues and dealing with various situations with comedic results. In Ichiroh! Volume 4, absolutely nothing happens. But who ever said that ‘nothing’ cannot be amusing?

The story of volume 4 revolves around a ‘study’ trip to Okinawa, with only a few minor subplots. A reader could easily skip volume 4 and miss absolutely nothing storyline-wise: No new characters are introduced, and no events change the status-quo.

Ichiroh! volume 4 is both the lowpoint and highpoint of the series. It is the volume with the most character development, the best jokes, the most cringe-worthy moments and with fewest events actually happening.

However, there’s been quite a few changes regarding the content of the strips themselves:

The ‘harem’ feelings from volume 2 and 3 are pretty much gone. While Shino is still insanely obsessive of Nanako (same for Nanako’s brother although he only appears in a few bonus pages in the end), and Akane is still extremely friendly to Nanako (but, then, she is to nearly everyone), the other characters don’t show any special interest in her anymore. Kozue actually finds herself falling for Akane more and more, instead, and Mai is more interested in seeing her fantasies rather than taking part in them.

The story is less Nanako-centric. While she’s still obviously the main character, the other characters interact with each other far more often than they did in previous chapters. For example, Shino talks with Anko, Akane and Mai more than previously and actually develops a personality that SLIGHTLY goes beyond pure obsession for Nanako. There’s also an hilarious subplot that revolves around Mayura taking Nanako’s miko job at the shrine and ‘helping’ children do their homeworks, plus a fair amount of strips where Nanako isn’t present at all (Unlike the previous 3 volumes which had very, very few strips without Nanako being present).

The characters are more ‘aware’ than they used to be. While that’s been increasingly so as the volumes went by, in volume 4 the characters are very much aware of both their own failings and of other characters’ behavior. For example, Nanako, Akane and Anko are all extremely aware of Shino’s obsession and often see through the reasons behind her plans. The characters in this volume feel slightly more intelligent, more realistic and deeper than in the previous ones (slightly being the keyword here).

The fanservice amount has been increased overall, drastically so in the first 25% of the volume. There’s a good amount of color pages at the beginning, and they mostly consist of Akane choosing a swimsuit, with a few full-page display showing her in said swimsuit. Since the majority of the volume consists of a summer vacation in Okinawa, there’s a LOT of swimsuits and flesh around, but, fortunately, that’s rarely the focus of the strips – as opposed to those early pages. You also have the requisite maid pages near the end, of course.

Generally-speaking, the first 25% of the volume is fanservice-focused. The last 25% felt a bit flat overall, except for a few specific pages that were actually quite good. The middle 50% were in my opinion the best pages out of all the Ichiroh! volumes thus far. In particular, Mayura “teaching” are some of the funniest pages I’ve ever read in any 4-koma comic.

If you liked the previous Ichiroh! volumes, by all means buy volume 4: Although there’s some very definitive low points in the volume, I personally feel that this is overall the best volume out of the four so far. If you were kind of ‘meh’ regarding the first three volumes, there’s certainly chance you’d enjoy the excellent middle portion of the story, although you might want to skip the first part. If you disliked the first few volumes, definitively skip this volume; while there’s been some changes, they are very unlikely to change your opinion.

As far as translated 4-koma comics go, Ichiroh! is certainly decent – one of the better ones in my opinion, especially volume 4. While it likely won’t set your world on fire, it’s definitively an enjoyable and a quite funny read. The final volume, volume 5, comes out in July, and for one I’m certainly looking forward to it.

Note: While it would be possible to read volume 4 without having read any of the first three volumes, I’d still recommend to read at least the first volume first so that the setup makes more sense (sort of). Also, do keep in mind that Ichiroh! is pretty much only comedy: There’s absolutely no drama, no touching moments and no action sequences of any kind.

Art – 8 (By 4-koma standards. Definitively one of the better-looking 4-koma, but do keep in mind that it’s still a 4-koma comic).
Story – 3
Characters – 7
Yuri – 5 (Shino is obsessive about Nanako, Kozue is definitively falling for Akane and there’s a maybe for Akane with Nanako, but it’s unfortunately extremely unlikely that any of this will ever lead anywhere.)
Service – 6 (Higher early in the volume, lower afterward)

‘Unbiased’ Overall – 7
Own Biased Overall – 8 (Varies from 5 to 9 depending on the section)

Erica here: Thank you very kindly Ayra. I am among those who were not particularly blown away by the first three volumes, so this review saved me having to get the fourth at all!  ^_^

Since I am requesting and receiving a lot more Guest Reviews these days, let me relink to the Okazu Guest Review Guidelines. If you’d like to write a Guest Review for Okazu, you must read and follow these. I’d hate to think that you went to the trouble of writing a review, only to find that I had the book and planned on writing about it or that I don’t accept reviews of scanlations or something else. ^_^ Thank you in advance for your consideration and your assistance!

In Jormungand, Volume 7, we turn our attention to another of Koko’s team, R, someone I had never noticed before they pointed him out. He turns out to be a /spoiler/ and as a result, Koko’s sanity, worldview and reason for living are called into question. In the end, Koko’s okay, Jonah is okay, pretty much everyone but R is okay. Oh well, that’s the price you pay for /spoiler/.

But, you know, we don’t care about death and destruction when we read Jormungand. We don’t care about the iffy morals, the ambiguous-at-best ethical standards of the governments involved in the book. What we really care about is how yet another female operative who is obsessed with Koko shows up. Because, of course, we are obsessed with Koko, too.

For fanservice purposes, Koko feels Valmet up a bit. Neither I nor Valmet seemed to mind. I don’t say this often, but I’d be okay with some pity sex there.

The art seems to have settled way down – I guess Takahashi either got better deadlines or got used to them. And he’s dropped the blacked out eyes every other panel. As a result, the story was much less like a really cheaply made movie. It felt way more high budget movie this time. It didn’t make the story-telling less messy, but I’ve come to find that kind of charming by now.

Other than all of that, people say things that sound really profound about life or death, but when you parse them, it’s all pretty much blah blah blah. And then they shoot at each other.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Characters – 8
Story – Hee hee. But I’ll say 7 anyway.
Yuri – 2
Service – 4

Overall – 7

The most meaningful scenes in the whole volume for me were when both Hex and Koko commented that they can’t sleep when the moon is full. I can’t sleep when the moon is full, either.