In Volume 1 of Dragon Sister!, we meet the reworked heroes of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, once again turned into women for our entertainment.

At the end of the first volume, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei have sold themselves to predatory lesbian Dong Zhou in order to secure their “brother” Liu Bei a command in the Royal Army. Dong Zhou ain’t no dummy, she’s going to have Liu Bei killed in order to keep Guan Yu and Zhang Fei for her own.

However, in Volume 2 she is foiled in this by the timely arrival of Lu Bu, a young girl with breathtaking strength. Seeing something even more potentially useful to her, Dong Zhou is willing to trade Guan Yu and Zhang Fei for Lu Bu. We learn a little bit about Dong Zhou’s past – enough to understand that her obsessive drive for power is to combat a painful and difficult rise to the top, and a reflection of her constant battle against the men who did not show her respect because she is a woman.

Dong Zhou is called away to support General He Jin in the Imperial court against the Eunuchs. She tells Liu Bei that if his volunteer army does something spectacular, she’ll give them rank, expecting both them and him to die. Only he does do something spectacular(ly stupid) and she’s impressed despite herself.

Which is exactly how I felt about this manga.

Despite the stupid premise – and the bits about the switching all the women back to being the men they should have been – this manga has actually been a not terribly bad version of the Romance. In fact, if you never were able to make heads or tails out of the original text, this would not be a horrible way to get some of the major plot points. I still don’t get Cao Cao, but that is my failing, not the story’s. ^_^

The art seems to have settled down a bit. There’s still an emphasis on portraiture, rather than action, but there’s more confidence in the lines. Service is mostly confined to shots of Guan Yu’s cleavage, a sentence which makes my head hurt. lol And Yuri is mostly set aside for power, as Dong Zhou cleverly realizes that screwing with a kid’s mind is easier than with adult minds, and tosses Guan Yu and Zhang Fei aside for Lu Bu.

If you can accept the biggest handwave, that the heros are women, and the secondary one that all the heros are women except the ones that aren’t, like Liu Bei, Cao Cao, He Jin and a few others, then the rest of the story really has no extraordinary hurdles for you to leap. It does have a few ordinary hurdles, because the Romance is not the easiest book in the world to read, as it details pretty heavy politics and military strategies.

Overall, a little despite myself, I actually liked this manga. It doesn’t look like a Volume 3 will be forthcoming at any point, which is a shame, because the world really needed another version of the Romance in which Guan Yu has cleavage.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7, even if they are still caricatures of themselves
Yuri – 1 Predatory lesbian wasn’t predatory at all.
Service – 4 There’s cleavage shots and some light bathing, and females sleeping next to each other, oh my!

Overall – 7

My genuine thanks to Okazu Superhero Dan P. for his sponsorship of today’s review, his patience, his generosity and his excellent taste in reviewers. ;-)

Sunshine Sketch, Volume 4 is meant to be read as a slice-of-life manga.

The problem with this is, to be compelling to me as a slice-of-life, a story needs to be a slice of life that is new to me and it needs to be a slice of life big enough to include character growth and maturity.

Sunshine Sketch is less a slice-of-life than a slice-of-fiction, and an incredibly narrow, unchanging fictitious world in which little ever changes.

We are meant to believe that a year has passed at the Hidamari Apartments, that Yuno and Miyako have moved up as 2nd-years and new students have entered the apartments as 1st-years. But Yuno and Miyako have not changed at all, and the new students take the place of the bicycle and the cat from the previous volume, as props with which the ensemble can run the same gags as always.

Sae and Hiro still have the same ambiguously gay relationship, and while new student Nazuna sort of implies a minor crush on Sae, we spend far more time pondering her popularity with the guys. Nazuna is also so low-self-esteem as to be painful to watch. Nori might be fun, in a series that wasn’t going to cover the same territory over again.

Entrance Ceremony, School Festival, Finals, Christmas, New Semester, Valentine’s Day…etc, etc. This is not slice-of-life, this is slice-of-slice-of-life, one endless rehash of the same dozen moments of high school, with new characters that change nothing. In some sense, this is high school from the point of view of the teachers, a cycle of events that repeat over and over, with only the names shifting to show that time has passed.

George R. once quoted me as saying that the value of sequels is that we are able to spend more time in the company of characters we love. I’ve now spent four volumes with the characters of Sunshine Sketch and know nothing more about them than I did four volumes ago.

Kate Dacey wrote vehemently about why 4-koma comics do not translate well and this manga makes a great example for her argument. There is nothing here to grab a reader; nothing unique, compelling or relevant. I’m more than happy to watch a few moments of peaceful time slip by, but this series is the manga equivalent of watching paint dry. Read any panel and it will read like any other panel. Character reactions will be overblown in proportion to the minor pun or misinterpretation in lieu of a funny punchline. “WHAT!?!” they will say, instead of “hah,” at one of Miyako’s jokes. Yuno will continue to be slightly awkward and not know what she wants. Hiro will be passive-aggressive about food, Sae will be an artist who writes or a writer who draws.

What makes slice-of-life compelling is watching the character over time, watching the slow, small changes that signal maturity. Aria does this. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou does this with genius. Sadly, Sunshine Sketch has us watching the slow passage of time, with no changes visible. Time spent, but not particularly well.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 6

Law of Marginal Manga Return – If the characters in the fourth volume are pretty much the same as they are in the first volume, and you don’t have a plot to catch the reader’s attention, you’ve failed to create a good manga. Plot or character – you’ve gotta have at least one.

My thanks today to Okazu Superhero Amanda M. for allowing me to articulate this new Law, by sponsoring today’s review!

I’m dedicating today’s review to YNN correspondent and sometimes Guest Reviewer here at Okazu, Mara, for turning me on to this series.

Jormungand, Volume 1 is a surprisingly silly look at a grim business – the business of arms dealing. Considered coldly, this may well be one of the most vile occupations possible for a human, since there’s no way to even pretend to be doing anything helpful. Arms dealers profit off of misery and it is in their best interests to keep wars going, (something briefly touched upon in Madlax, as we learn that Friday Monday and his organization are fighting the war strictly to keep the war from ending, so they can make money arming both sides.)

When you think of arms dealers, you might not immediately envision a young, attractive, cracked (but not psychotic,) woman, but that’s what you get in Jormungand – a young woman with the whimsical name Koko Hekmatyar. Because I am the way I am, I looked up her last name and discovered it is an Afghan name. Plausibility is fun.

The story starts with the addition of a taciturn “child-soldier” who hates arms dealers, to Koko’s crack squad of lackeys. I was deeply concerned that the story was going to wallow in Jonah’s tragic past and make us care about him, but thankfully not. Instead, Jonah is whisked into the middle of a crackpot situation in which Koko and her lackeys have *way* more fun than is reasonable killing people. And worse – we have way too much fun watching it. The reason side of my head says, “I really don’t want to be enjoying arms dealer shenanigans” but the comics-reading bit says, “screw that.” It helped when Jonah started to feel that way too.

Koko is crazy in a good way. Not like Balalaika from Black Lagoon, who embodies cool competence. Instead, Koko represents the light comedy style of military leadership, made famous by B.D. of Doonesbury. Only unlike B.D., Koko is more often the joke perpetrator, rather than its brunt.

Yuri in this series is represented by one of Koko’s lackeys, Valmet. Valmet wears an eyepatch, (the medical kind), but is nonetheless hypercomptent with weapons. She states plainly that Koko is the only one she’ll go to the wire for, and is seen many times blushing at the Koko in her head and sometimes even the actual Koko outside her head. She fantasizes about holding Koko in her arms and at least once has the stereotypical nosebleed at Koko’s cuteness. So, yeah, she’s on the team. No one who is sane will expect anything to happen between them, howver. Any fun you’re going to have here will be watching Valmet watching Koko. Valmet herself has a rival/admirer, Mildo, but she’s packed off at the end of the arc. She’ll be back, I have no doubt.

The upshot here is, Jormungand is a fun, action-filled story full of entertainining psychotics, murderers and people who spend their lives helping people kill other people, with a teeny hint of eau de Lys just below the ear.

Ratings:

Art – 7 A little quirky good, and a little quirky bad
Story – 7, It’s not going to be high literature, we just want to see people shoot things
Characters – 8 Koko’s what makes it all work, but once she made Jonah spit-take, I even liked him
Yuri – 2
Service- 11 for military equipment otaku, otherwise, 1

Overall – 8

Thank you Mara, this was the kind of thing I like spending my money on. Even if there is no Yuri in it at all, I’ll be getting the next volume. ^_^

Way back, when I read the original Viz adaptation of the Silent Mobius manga, there was only one thing I felt I was missing. In the original Japanese editions, there was some seriously servicey- nice art under the dust covers. Not having the dust covers, the English edition failed to have the art.

When I heard that Udon was redoing Silent Mobius my first reaction was “why?” Sure, the original is out of print. Okay, so it’ll be back in print, that’s cool. But they were touting an all-new translation and I was pretty skeptical that they were going to manage to be better than Matt Thorn. Unless they gave me my dust cover art. Then I’d be happy.

Before I critique the reproduction, let me say that I just love the story of Silent Mobius. Powerful, all-female group of cops, fighting creepy unearthly baddies and having real, adult relationships with each other and, in the case of Kiddy and Katsumi, with their boyfriends. Like…wow, you just never see this kind of thing any more. Nowadays Yuki would be drawn to look 6 and the rest would be powerful only in between being powerless and giggly.

The series itself has a lot of my hooks – adult women in uniform, magic, fighting, Rally Cheyenne…. As many times as they release this series, I’m probably willing to read it. :-)

The absolute, flat out best thing about the new Udon edition of Silent Mobius: Complete Edition Volume 1 is the reproduction. It’s orders above the old Viz edition. I’m sitting here with the both of them side-by-side and there is no comparison. Udon has added in a color image gallery and is presenting the book unflipped, as well. All very good. Still no dusctover art. Boo-hoo.

The translation is fine, until it isn’t. There’s no appreciable difference for most of the story, because “Look OUT!!!” is going to read the same no matter who translates it.

And then, jarringly, Nami’s ofuda, which were sensibly translated as “talismans” in the Viz edition, were called “labels.” Labels? What the…? I feel like a Dilbert comic hashing this one thing over and over but…. I have this weird hope that new editions with new translations are *better* than the original – that they might leave less changed, more intact, that they assume that the reading audience is intelligent, perhaps educated and definitely educatable. So when I get a new edition that dumbs a smart sci-fi/fantasy story down for the *one* person who might accidentally pick it up and not know what an ofuda is, then I’m not all that blown away.

As for Yuri, I need to state that Ralph and Kiddy are one of my favorite straight couples, and I think the idea of Kiddy x Katsumi is delusional. However, speaking of delusion, as I said in my original review of this manga “I maintain that Rally is totally gay (using only my gaydar and my unflappable belief that lesbian manga characters are, in fact, cooler, better looking and more competent than the other characters around them.)”

So, while the technical reproduction is Aces and the color pages are spiffy, I’m hung up on the use of the word “labels” and lack of dust cover art.

What this proves to me (again) is that the one edition of this series I’ll keep on my shelves is the original Japanese edition. Then I have the art, the page quality and a translation (you know, the one in my head) that I can live with. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 1
Service – There is service, but there’s very little loser-ness to it. Nothing wrong with enjoying attractive men and women’s bodies. Let’s call it a 3.

Today’s thanks is directed at Okazu Superhero and “Friend of Yuri” Eric P for his kind sponsorship for this review!