Archive for the English Manga Category


The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All, Volume 1

September 22nd, 2024

Because Sumiko Arai’s school life rom-com is absolutely one of this year’s most-anticipated Yuri series in English, I’m going to give it straight to you right up front. You know I have never pulled punches when I review Yuri before and I will not now.

I have read this edition through twice now and Yen Press did a REALLY GOOD job.

I can say with absolute conviction that you should run right out and pre-order The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All, Volume 1, which will be headed your way one month from today. ^_^

Aya is a popular and fashionable young woman, who has a secret. She finds comfort in listening to western rock music of the 1990’s and 2000’s. When she’s by herself, lost in her music, she finds her own rhythm. She can’t share her musical tastes, they are too obscure and she kind of likes it that way. One day Aya walks into a grungy CD store and is blown away by the cool guy behind the counter. As days pass they share music and Aya realizes she’s got a full-on crush. But she’s not the only one with a secret. Sitting next to Aya at school is nerdy background-type Mitsuki….who is the “guy” in the CD store. It’ll take some intervention, but Mitsuki and Aya will start to open up to one another in the first volume of this popular online Yuri manga.

What most first-time readers will notice right away is the unique color scheme. As I noted in my review of this volume in Japanese, “With its uniquely visible color scheme of black, white and a vivid green, new pages of this comic were always super noticeable whenever they came across my feed. The art in this manga reflects the online sensibility too, I think. With unique perspectives on panel structure, body language and expression, this comic feels somehow grounded in street art and manga art at the same time.” You can see how the angles (what we in my house refer to as “Batman angles” after the kitschy 1960s television show) and the breaking of the panel walls, create a dynamic feel to a story in which, realistically, people are mostly not “doing” anything. It’s a great look that I’ve already seen adopted elsewhere.

The plot is not new, but the handling of it is gentle and kind-hearted. Nosy classmate Narita is rooting for these two just as we are – he pushes them into each other’s way in a fun way. Both the angst and the comedy notes hit just right. As the volume comes to a close, a classic plot complication is revealed, which is resolved in a not-classic way, thankfully.

Volume 1 is a fun read that leaves you wanting more. As I said, Yen did a terrific job reproducing the story. The color is vivid and so is the language. Ajani Oloye did a fantastic job on the translation, really nailing the core concepts in English. It felt natural and fun all the way through. I have no criticisms except Yen’s house style for lettering. Brandon Bovia does amazing work and should have been give the chance to retouch more. That’s an ongoing whinge though, nothing to do with this book, particularly.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 9 Even the side characters are fun
Service – Admiring the cool onii-san that turns out to be a chick is always great service.  Oh, and page 49. ^_^
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

As highly-anticipated series go, this may well be Yen’s best effort to date. Fun, colorful, charming, you’ll definitely want this book.





Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Volume 5

September 20th, 2024

The end is nigh in Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Volume 5.

There were never many humans in Ashinano Hitoshi’s story, and now most of them have left. The grass has filled in even more of the space around Cafe Alpha, fewer and fewer people visit. Long days pass in which Alpha reads and thinks about the humans who used to occupy this space. Why are there lights that look like streetlights along the unused paths? She spend time with Maruko, who is working with Kokone now and Kokone whose love for Alpha is visible to even Makki-chan.

Takahiro is gone, Makki follows after him, they have a child. Alpha remains. And when she goes home, Kokone is there to welcome her.

In this final volume we learn nothing new at all. We’ll never know why humanity is dwindling. All we know is that there is a world out there and it’s our choice to see what there is of it. Perhaps we should stop at a local cafe, greet the woman behind the counter and think of Cafe Alpha, a place we can never visit, but which will life with us for the rest of our lives.

May the night of humankind be one of utmost peace.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

From the bottom of my heart, I thank the team at Seven Seas for this omnibus edition. I never imagined I’d be able to share my love of this series with you all.





The Executioner and Her Way of Life Manga, Volume 5

September 16th, 2024

A girl with blonde hair tied up in a black bow, in blue and yellow, holds her hand up and out, palm facing us, as she powers up for a spell.As you know if you read Okazu regularly, I have been following the Light Novel series by Mato Sato, The Executioner and Her Way of Life, and the resulting anime. I haven’t, however, had a chance to read the manga at all and wanted to see how it holds up. Since I know the story, I felt it was perfectly acceptable to jump in at any volume. Thanks to the generosity of Yen Press, I have a review copy for just that purpose. So, here I am, beginning with The Executioner and Her Way of Life Manga, Volume 5, with character designs by nilitsu, illustrated by Ryo Mitsuya. 

Also, as you may remember, I have not been a fan of the art for the Light Novels, as they until recent volumes favored portraiture over illustration – a common enough issue in Light Novels and artist alleys alike. Overall, I find the manga artists for Light Novels have to do a great deal of work – especially in early arcs – to build up the look and feel of a world. I say especially, because in many cases, Light Novels that began as webnovels aren’t really fully featured in the writing, either. But now, having gotten to the 8th volume of this series in Light Novel and finding both story and character settling in to a fairly rich narrative, how would it feel to step backwards to those early days?

It wasn’t bad, honestly.

Mitsuya-sensei does a very solid job of conveying both the horror of the Human Error “Evil” and the action of the fight, in a way that the narrative did not fully communicate. The art still does not portray Menou as an unusual beauty, although Akari’s chest is portrayed as prominent. I do think that going forward the use of the word “boobs” is going to have to be a point off, though. Like “spicy” for a book with sex scenes, breasts, chest, decolletage even, but boobs will always feel infantile to me. As does the portrayal of said breast tissue moving in ways that they certainly do not naturally move. That said, due to the original character designs being followed pretty closely, it was easy to recognize everyone on sight.

A story like this, with a great deal of fighting, action and dramatic spellcasting really seems to do better with a more visual medium. I had enjoyed the anime, which did a decent job of paring down some of the early story building. Jumping into the manga at this point, might not be something a new reader could do, but I was able to skip a lot of the clumsiness of the early arcs.  This story still is an isekai, but it is not just a “game world” or a simple reflection of generic feudal life. The history and politics – and the magic use – in this world are worth delving in to.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7 (not my favorite arc, the story will get better from this point on)
Characters – 7 People’s motivations are still a bit muddy, something else that will become clearer as the story progresses
Service – Besides the aforementioned breasts, shockingly little in this volume
Yuri – 4 Momo’s feelings for Menou, toxic as they are, Menou’s feelings for Akati, as unfocused as they are

Overall – 7, but I hope to move quickly past this arc into the Mechanical Society arc, which I quite liked.

 





Search and Destroy, Volume 1

September 15th, 2024

Looming over a crowded and grim cityscape, with scenes of war and loss, are a motley young person and a wide-eyed girl in fur, rendered in dark tones of gray, black and brown, with the book title in bright yellow 3-D block letters. Come, the incantation sing,
Frantic all and maddening,
To the heart a brand of fire,
The Furies’ hymn,
That which claims the senses dim,
Tuneless to the gentle lyre,
Withering the soul within.

– “The Song of the Furies,” from The Eumenides, by Aeschylus.

Search and Destroy is, simply put, a science fiction re-telling of Tezuka Osamu’s manga Dororo, the tale of a young man whose father bartered his son’s human parts for power in feudal Japan. In Search and Destroy, Volume 1 the young person in question is Hyaku, a girl whose body is ravaged by cybernetic beings known as “creech” (i.e., “creatures.”) who were formerly humanity’s enemy, but have now forged a tentative peace with humans. That peace covers a myriad of horrors with each side still set on control over the other, but it has resolved into crime and politics, rather than outright war.

As in Tezuka’s original Dororo is a gutter-dwelling child who survives by stealing what she can, when she can. On the run from the law, she encounters a foul-smelling person(?) creature(?) who quite incidentally saves her. Over and over Dororo and Hyaku encounter one another, as Hyaku seems to be targeting specific powerful creech’s in order to reclaim her human parts.

This manga, by Atsushi Kaneko, is a grim, finely detailed look at the underside of human society in the future. Kaneko’s art is extraordinarily detailed, and can be very beautiful, but his work tends to highlight the grime beneath the glitz. We are constantly given views of human, animal and creech parts ripped open to be seen as  kind of clinical specimen. They are drawn with equivalence, showing a metallic” spine” or “bones” with exactly the same emotional weight as a humans’. And yet, when human parts are removed from creech parts, it feels more like a release than a removal.

The story is taught with anger, violence, disability, social inequality and the specific kind of social unawareness we cultivate as humans so as to not have to “see” the unfortunate around us. And yet, we can’t help but watch as Hyaku’s rage carries her along her path to regain herself, piece by piece. 

I could not put this manga down when I picked it up…even knowing what it would bring me. Of course I am familiar with Tezuka’s manga, but I also had subscribed to Mangasplaining Extra for a long while, as I strongly support the work of the folks at Mangasplaining. I unsubbed when Substack decided that Nazi money was worth more than people’s safety, but I am still in support of the work the Mangasplaining team is doing. Okinawa  by Susumu Higa was an amazing license that I immediately donated to my local library.

Search and Destroy is not light reading. But if you too are raging at the inequity of society and looking for a force for vengeance to attach one’s self to, as Dororo does to Hyaku, this is a very good manga.

Ratings:

Art – 9 It is grim and complicated, but beautifully detailed
Story – 9 Same
Characters – Same
Service – Yes, but less T&A and more in the “emotionally torturing humans for pleasure” sense

Overall – 9

In 2024, what woman is able to read a book like this and not feel the rage Hyaku feels at having herself carved up and sold off in pieces as a commodity? Not me, for sure. I spent every page singing songs to the Furies asking for vengeance over those who demand control over women’s bodies.

Many thanks to Fantagraphics for the review copy.





Cheerful Amnesia, Volume 4

September 9th, 2024

A woman with short, dark hair in a wedding dress in the foreground smiles gently. Behind her another woman standing at an angle to her, with longer dark hair and also in a wedding dress, looks surprised.It was painfully apparent from Volume 1 that I am not the ideal audience for Tamamushi Oku’s Cheerful Amnesia series. As the story progressed, so many handwaves had to be added to the original premise to keep the joke going and each additional handwave felt more and more threadbare. In Cheerful Amnesia, Volume 4, the story comes to  climax, but…

Arisa’s amnesia has been traced to an overload of positivity, which makes her collapse. But she and Mari are going to get married anyway. Before they do so, Arisa wants to meet Mari’s mother, who has been presented as a conservative obstacle to their happiness. In between Mari stressing that she and Arisa are not having sex and Arisa stressing that they are not having sex, but being far too embarrassed and/or collapsing in an excess of emotion, the entire conversation rolls around the same territory of “boobs,” underwear and “sexy times,” which is great if we are 12 years old. As I am many decades past that, I found it all excruciating. But, wait! There’s more!

Added to the idea that Arisa lost her memory because she was “too happy,” and that neither she nor Mari can manage a single adult conversation about their lives and relationship, even as they plan on having a wedding ceremony, we must confront the fact that Arisa blurts out the most inappropriate and useless information and has absolutely no ability to speak coherently. That gaping mouth does, actually, indicate a person who shouts strange things to complete strangers. But the deal-breaker for me was Mari neglecting to mention her father or siblings, even as she brings Arisa home to meet her family. “Oh, I have a younger brother,” she said and later – as an aside- , “I have a sister, too.” and I just…snapped. What the actual fuck. (-_-)?!?!? Mari has confronted her mother’s disapproval, at least, and I guess yay for that?

Arisa and Mari do get married and, the kiss, when they finally manage it, seems to unlock Arisa’s memories and she does not collapse, so perhaps they will spend the remainder of their lives happily-ever-after.

Of course one cannot take this story seriously. Even knowing that, I found it absolutely exhausting. Nothing in it was even near the realm of “comedy” for me. Since the entire plot was predicated on two adult women who had a long-term relationship simply ignoring their history and not having a conversation, it was both annoying and frustrating. So why am I reviewing it? Mostly to tell our late friend Bruce that he was absolutely right in his final review here on Okazu.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Still noticeably better
Story – … 4
Characters – 5 They are adults who need to grow up already
Service – 6 “Sexy” things. “Boobs.” Come on already
Yuri – 9

Overall – 4

Thank you very much to Yen Press for the review copy. I hope to give it to a loving home.

Oh, and my prediction was totally wrong about the ending, phew. ^_^