Sometimes you just need a manga with some bite and no mushy romance will really scratch the itch for adventure. Enough school girls suddenly realizing that they are madly and passionately in love with the back of the person in front of them’s head, or their sempai in debate club. (Do Japanese schools have debate clubs? I have no idea, honestly.) What you need is a grand rope-swinging girl pal/buddy movie, with zombies and pirates and other stuff.

Hourai Girls  (蓬莱ガールズ) is just the manga for you.

Set in a fantasy land that is vaguely 17th century Chinese, with heavy overlays of sorcery, Rinka is a princess and rich girl in name only. Her father, an abusive wizard/warlord, keeps her locked in the house with only her childhood friend YanYan to look after her. YanYan, who is a zombie, called a “soma, has all the best qualities of a rag doll, in that easily detached limbs are also easily re-attacked. As a soma YanYan fits right in with the rest of the household staff, who also appear to be stitched up zombies.

Rinka makes a few attempts at escaping, only to be recaught, and beaten into oblivion by her father, who then rends YanYan into pieces so we can hate him more, then he goes off and chortles over his creepy soma armies. It’s obvious to all of us that he will be the ultimate boss. But in the meantime, Rinka and YanYan have to get out first. And they do.

They decide to head to “Hourai” a probably fictitious land in a children’s book. Rinka learns about money and shopping and YanYan stops her from being arrested about a million times. Because of YanYan’s visible stitches, she is immediately tagged as a soma. The villagers have no good feelings for soma, but when the headman offers to pay them to stop a truly horrific creature who is slaughtering villagers, Rinka and YanYan take the job. They kill the multi-armed, regenerating creature and are paid in money…and a tragic backstory. The creature was the headman’s wife who killed herself after their child was kidnapped and whom he brought back to life, but not humanity, with sorcery. Boo-hoo. Rinka gets a glimpse of the harsh life outside her father’s house, but is not fazed. Off they go…they charter a boat!

The boat captain is a decent guy. He’ll take them as far as he can and he teaches Rinka to water ski. When soma mermen attack the ship, YanYan and Rinka are not surprised to find that Rinka’s father is behind it. They tell him to get lost and head west. Dropped off in the harbor, YanYan is immediately captured for being a soma, by a self-selected police force. Apparently this town has a recent run-in with soma that destroyed both town and citizens. The townspeople also have cute, fluffy dog tails.

The head of the secret police squad thinks Rinka and YanYan are so damn cool and the fact that they are going to Hourai is cool and everything is so coooool!, that he lets them go and off they head to find their Shangri-La. To Be Continued.

YanYan and Rinka are close, but there is no Yuri, or even a hint of such.. This is shinyuu manga, BFFs, best buds, gal pals. There’s no lovey-dovey, but it was still fun.

I found this book in a Book-Off in Tokyo and picked up on a lark. It was a fun…if occasionally creepy…read. But the fact that it was very high pirate fantasy adventure meant no nightmares, even with all those body parts strewn around. I wasn’t going to bother with the next volume, but it looks like it is the end of the series, so maybe I will, after all. You never know when I’ll get that urge to read about besties killing monsters and having adventures together again.

Update: I sure did get around to Volume 2 and…it has a happy ending!

Ratings:

Art – How does one rate zombies and multi-limbed human eating monsters? 7
Story – 8
Character – 7
Yuri – 0
Service – 1

Overall – 8 Itch scratched

When you pick up a copy of Himawari-san, you can just…relax. There’ll be no high drama here. There’s no plot complications because there’s no plot. A volume of Himawari-san is time spent with an enjoyable book for no other reason than that it’s enjoyable. For comparison, check out the reviews of Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3.

In Volume 4 of Himawari-san, we delve just slightly more into the current Himawari-san’s past, her relationship with her brother and with the previous Himawari-san. Unexpectedly, the previous owner of Himawari Shoubo, was a extroverted young lady who was singlehandedly responsible for bringing the current Himawari-san out of her shell. Even as I write that, I wonder why I supposed the previous owner would be as introverted as the current one…perhaps because when one thinks of “small book store owner” one immediately thinks of bookworms who care about books more than people.

Nonetheless, both Himawari-san’s brother and she were captivated by the previous owner, much as Matsuri is captivated by the current owner, as we are reminded several times. Matsuri’s friends are now comfortable with Matsuri’s crush and, as Christmas approaches at the end of the book, we find that both Matsui and Himawari-san are growing accustomed to it, as well.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 1

Overall  – 8

This is a series imbued with the sweet smell of old books, the sepia tones of nostalgia and bittersweet feelings of crushes long gone.  A heartwarming read for a cold winter’s day.

I discovered Takemoto Izumi first with his pin-up super spy series, Transistor Ni Venus. (For which I even wrote a fanfic, I was so charmed.) I then spent some time puzzling over his series Sakura no Kiwa, completely befuddled as to why I didn’t hate it. ^_^: Takemoto-sensei has been churning out ever so many series for a number of different publishers, but something about this series totally hit my funny bone. And so, here we are at Volume 1 of Shinryakumono De  (シンリャクモノデ).

The title can be translated as “Invaders” or “Aggressors,” but as is completely typical of Takemoto-sensei’s work, his idea of “aggression” is sillier, more random and fluffier than most people’s.

The story takes place on an Earth-like planet, we shall say, and every chapter begins with a reminder that we have been invaded throughout time. Each chapter follows an “invasion” that varies widely. In one case, a lizard detective and his human assistants track down ghosts in a haunted house, or a high school student watches as the sky rips open and giant seed appears on the school grounds. The seed opens to allow a sheep to wander out, and is replaced with another  seed that contains a giant hairy monster, which, when told to go away, does. A third seed appears and an alien girl comes out, not to invade, per se, but to apologize and lay a kiss on the heroine of the story.

This alien appears again later, in a story in which a high school girl, who is much admired by her female schoolmates, finds her bedroom invaded by cat-sized animal-eared girls. The alien appears once more to apologize for the inconvenience, retrieve the “invaders” and bestow a kiss.

Another “invader” is a species of ivy…a chapter with which I really sympathized. We have ivy on the house. It really does invade. A tentacle monster “invades” a beach party, but its only act of aggression is to repeatedly move the girls’ luggage to the beach across the bay. In the final story a girl awakens to her memories and powers of being a god, sorta, kinda.

Ratings:

Art – If you like his goofy art style, 9, if not, less
Story – Variable, I’d say it averages at 8. Perfect bedtime reading for me
Characters – Sadly, there’s not much chance to really get to know them, since the volume is all shorts
Yuri – Mild, the alien girl and the girls crushing on Yuki. Let’s say 3
Service – Some light “pretty girls are pretty” service, but his is not a truly service-y art style

Overall – 8

The entire thing is enjoyably wtf.

When, a Few Years Ago (TM), Vertical Publishing announced that it was going to be publishing an English-language version of Kibayashi Yuko. Kibayashi Shin and Okamoto Shu’s industry-changing wine manga, Kami no Shizuku, I thought, “Nice, now I don’t have to read it in Japanese.” I wasn’t just being lazy. although yes, I was being a little lazy, but trying to learn about wine through manga sounded fun, but trying to figure out the French lingo through Japanese didn’t.

I only started drinking at all in my later 30s. I remember the day I began drinking wine vividly. It quickly became apparent that the two most popular wines – Merlot and Chardonnay – were not for me. Both had a flatness to the taste that put me off. For years I stuck with Cabernet Sauvignon; reasonably priced, fruity, it’s a good gateway wine. By the time I started reading Vertical’s Drops of God, I was mostly drinking Pinot Grigio. A year or two later, and a new boutique wine store opens up within walking distance of my house, so I’m trying a lot more kinds of wine from more locations…and suddenly,  Drops of God makes perfect sense to me.

The other day, I swear to you this is true, I described a wine as “a luxurious, high-end apartment, with a pressboard door.”  ^_^; A friend described the Washington State Sauvignon Blanc I brought as “very French, almost Sancere” and I knew what he meant! We discussed the terroir, how the Columbia Valley is very mineral-y. It’s all very creepy. Thanks, Vertical. (-_-)

After Volume 5 of the English version, I switched to the Japanese. And there we were, having a discussion about old vines (V.V.) that I learned about because Shizuku needed to learn about it. It’s insidious, this wine stuff. When I tried a 2008 Haute-Medoc, I actually heard the angels sing. Heaven help me, I’m decanting. /sob/

Anyway, I know I’ve been slow on the reviews. I’m working my way through some non-fiction and comics that require actually thinking and/or are not Yuri. But I promise there’s good stuff on the way. Tonight I’m curling up with the first Volume of the new 20th anniversary edition of Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン 完全版 1) and a bottle of The Chemist (Red Blend) by Smokescreen. Happy Weekend.