I am once again back home and have two weeks worth of news, event reports and awesome stuff to share with you. Sorry for the radio silence, but when you see what I have been up to, you’ll understand why. ^_^

Last winter, I introduced you to Rinka, daughter of a powerful and evil lord, who escapes her father’s clutches with her servant, the zombie YanYan, in Hourai Girls, Volume 1. The two girls head out to find the mythical land “Hourai.”

Along the way they’ve picked up a dog-tailed leader of a warrior clan, Ku-long, who is actually not much of a fighter and prefers to read books. He had a book about Hourai when he was a child and wants to find the paradise, too. Before they head to Hourai, he insists they stop at his home, so he can get the book. In Volume 2 of Hourai Girls (蓬莱ガールズ) we learn that his hometown has been infested by monsters and many of his people have been slaughtered.

Ku-long hasn’t been a good leader, in fact he ran away, so his people resist his sudden drive to roust the monsters, but of course YanYan and Rinka lead the way and Ku-long admits that the book about Hourai is long ago burnt by his malicious father. However, he discovers his new leadership skills and takes the place of command. Then he abandons his people again to go follow the girls on their quest.

Rinka and YanYan have vivid memories of Rinka as a child, but their memories differ in some key ways. Rinka remembers YanYan as her beloved friend, while YanYan remembers being turned into a zombie and rendered into pieces and reattached by Rinka’s evil father, then forced to attend Rinka. She admits this all to Rinka and they discover that, now, so many years later, they truly have come to a place where they care about and trust one another. Rinka puts her own life on the line for her zombie friend and YanYan is able to let the past go. Until it comes back in the form of her brother – the man who brought her back from the dead, in desperation, after his family was slaughtered. They also make peace with their misdeeds and part as family once again.

At which point the volume and the epic story wraps up with YanYan, Rinka and Ku-long finding Hourai. The End.

The ending is abrupt, but it was perfectly fine. We’d slaughtered all the monsters we could usefully slaughter, had all the emotional epiphanies that could be had and it would all get rather repetitive from here on in. I was quite surprised that the story took any time to deal with YanYan’s past, much less her family and gave a big chunk of time to her feelings about Rinka and vice versa. I’m not sure I’d call their relationship love, but it’s surely affection.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Not bad for so much gore
Story – Likewise
Characters – Likable, in an action movie kind of way
Yuri – 4 Probably more sisterly than anything, but if you wanted to go there, you could
Service – Of the zombie guro kind, mostly blood and body parts.

Overall – 8

A fun rollicking tale that I absolutely could not read just before bed or I’d dream of dismembered people. Not bad for a $1 purchase at the used book store. ^_^

In advance of the UDON Entertainment release of the Kill La Kill Manga in English, (and since everything in the bookstore was on sale,) I thought I’d grab a copy in Japanese and give it a look.

Kill La Kill manga (キルラキル) (this link goes to the Kindle version,) as one might expect, is pretty much word for word, scene for scene, from the anime.

If you haven’t seen the anime, then let me set up the story. In a multitopian future, where the haves have a lot and the have-nots have even less than they do now, there is a school that is ruled by those with the power of the Goku uniforms – uniforms that enhance their natural skills. Into this school rides an outsider, a girl names Matoi Ryuuko, who bears half of an outsized scissor and a massive grudge against the person who killed her father. This set up is classic martial arts movie, right down to it’s basic weave. Ryuuko will have to fight her way up the hierarchy to be worth to fight the head of the school, Kiryuuin Satsuki.

If you have watched the anime, you know that none of this is the real story. ^_^ (Please do not spoil it though.)

For you, I want to note a few things – the initial scene with Sengetsu is much less stressful in the manga than it was in the anime. It’s not as prolonged, obviously we have no sound, and the narrative softens the edginess that lead it to inevitably be rape scene-like. Perhaps my familiarity with what would happen helped, as well. All told, it was not nearly as bad.

Mako-chan is completely Mako-chan-ish. If you feel that there is a closeness beyond friendship between Ryuuko and Mako, I’m pretty sure you’ll get that same vibe from the manga. In fact, because the words are near identical to the anime, you can practically hear each seiyuu say their lines. I’ll be interested to see how UDON handles the quirks of accent and speech in this manga, but my gut sense is they’ll just ignore most of it and present it all in “generic translation voice.”

Akizuki Ryo’s art is pretty much perfect for the narrative and there’s less service than the anime. Although there is service, but it is neither generic, nor excessive, considering the narrative with 20/20 hindsight.

Overall, it’s still an over the top story line, with great action and an interesting discussion of the nature of power, privilege and other important things wrapped in an incredibly silly story. A fun read and I look forward to the English release!

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Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7  It barely gets started here, but for action alone, it’s good
Characters – 7 We’ve only just gotten to know them as of yet. This score will go up
Yuri – 0
Service – 5

Overall – 7 A sold start, I look forward to more

If you have either seen the entire story, or do not mind spoilers, I recommend this food for thought: Is Kill La Kill a Warning About Wearable Technology?

Volume 2 of Marine Corps Yumi, (まりんこゆみ) written by our dear friend Ana Moreno, with art by Nogami Takeshi, picks up where Volume 1 left off, with Nipponian high school grad Yumi deep in the middle of boot camp to become a Marine in her quest to become President of the United States of Amerigo.

Boot camp is a series of painful, exhausting, mind-fucking, embarrassing and demeaning tasks. Sounds like loads of fun, doesn’t it? ^_^

The first half of the volume details the hundred different ways recruits have their minds and bodies beaten and bruised, but it’s in the second part of the volume that we see who stands tall at the end.

The final part of the manga details the three-day “crucible”, the world’s toughest final exam that no “tough mudder” race can ever truly approach in intensity. Everything the recruits have learned in the last three months is tested, while they themselves are pushed to breaking.

Rita Fernandez is, of course, born to be a Marine. Donna King turns out to pretty smart, despite all her best effort at hiding it, Linda Crawford is a solid team player. Yumi isn’t the brightest bulb in the box, but she’s got “gambare” and persists though everything. And, in the end, as the sun rises on our team and they pass the final trial, there must have been something in the ink, or maybe my allergies were acting up, because my eyes just kept on being kind of teary.

Ana has been all over media recently. Nico Nico Douga did a broadcast with her and Nogami-sensei and it was awesome to hear her talking about her experiences as a comic artist, Marine and author on the Deconstructing Comics podcast. I really recommend listening to this, to get an idea of her process and what to expect in Volume 3. And, of course, you can read this comic for free online in Japanese or English. (Catch up now in English and get those hankies ready for the end of the crucible!)

For those of us here, who love stories of women teaming up, getting stronger and succeeding against great odds, this is probably the most realistic story we’re going to read that actually has those qualities that we love so much in our fiction. I want to take one last moment to note again that Marine Corp Yumi is the most racially diverse manga (without scrunchy-making stereotypes) I’ve ever read. And there’s plenty of stupid physical gags to keep us laughing. (And, if you ask her nicely, maybe Ana’ll add in a lesbian Yuri-lover to counter Donna’s scrunchy-making stereotypical BL fujoshi-ness. ^_^)

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8 How about the dust in here, my eyes just won’t stop weeping
Characters – 8
Yuri – 0 (so far)
Service – 4 There’s definitely some service in those hills

Overall – 8

I’m reading the Japanese comic online, so I know what’s coming, but I can’t wait for Volume 3! I’m definitely one of the military otaku this comic targets and that makes me a little uncomfortable. ^_^; Next life, I’m going to be a Marine, dammit.

Many, many, many thanks to Ana for this review copies and extras that went out to some lucky folks with the last contest!

When you pick up a manga by Takemoto Izumi, you can be sure of several things: The girls will be cute, the guys nice; the lead character will be odd, but charming, and; there will be cosplay, however thinly veiled the reason. The one thing you cannot be sure of is…a plot.

And so it is with Kokome Futeiten (ここめ不定点), a slice-of-life story set in a high school, starring Mugihatake Kokome, an unusually petite first-year, who is constantly mistaken for an elementary school student, and her friends Yukari, who looks positively adult next to Kokome, and the manga club president who actually is an elementary school age student in high school, Mimika.

Days pass quickly in this school, with many dress up scenes, visits to Comiket, and various club and school activities, as long as they afford opportunities for silly gags and cosplay. These include the spreading of memes and trends among the middle schoolers, the short-lived trend of calling Kokome “Kokome-sama”, and settling on “O-kome-chan,” and Kokome’s fame as a voice in the anime club’s hand-made anime.

Yuri pops up late in the manga when Mimika starts kissing her friends hello, apparently after the fashion of a classmate who is a Russian transfer student. Kokome looks forward to her kiss the next day and is bummed when Mimika says the teacher put the kibosh on the habit.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 1
Service – 1

Overall – 7

There’s nothing here that you couldn’t show an 11-year old, but also it’d be a rare 11-year old that found it amusing….this kind of comic is the purview of adults looking back with sienna-tinted nostalgia on school life.