I just don’t even…I…don’t…know what…/shakes head/

In R.O.D., Volume 10, Yomiko is sent by Joker to a fancy girl’s school to…something. She’s enrolled as a student, the main point of which is to get her in a school uniform. I gather this because it is mentioned about 8750 times that she is wearing a school uniform. At the school she finds a veritable book heaven. Books are everywhere, *all* the clubs are about reading and writing. Her roommate Kaku Izumi’s name refers to writing, as Yomiko’s does to reading. They become best friends.

There are a few disturbing things about the school – all the teachers are named Haga and they look identical. And while books are revered, romance novels, light novels and other light reading are forbidden. This means there are no books by Sumiregawa Nenene in the school. Heaven turns to hell instantly for Yomiko. But Izumi has one of Nenene’s books in their room. Phew!

Yomiko learns of the “Read Fight,” during which two girls read a book and are quizzed on small points of detail until one fails to answer correctly. Yomiko dominates Read Fight, utterly destroying the barely-in-existence-sanity of the champion, Mitsusei Utsuo. Mitsusei is also the chief dog and enforcer of the Student Council President, Kuniya Kino-sama, thus making their names two of the most tortured puns ever. (Kino Kuniya is easy enough to figure out, if you’re familiar with the Japanese bookstore chain Kinokuniya. Remembering that “mitsu” can also be read “san” and the character used for “Utsuo” is also “do”, instead of Mitsusei Utsuo, one gets Sanseido, another large Japanese bookstore chain.)

Kino-sama as Student Council president is beautiful, charismatic (we are repeatedly told) and prone to vomiting up blood.

…

With Izumi’s backing (who turns out to have a secret – she was the former Vice President) Yomiko runs for Council President and, after corruption in the count is uncovered, wins. As President, Yomiko gets the key to the secret book room, fights off multiple Haga-senseis and retrieves whatever Joker sent her there for. The end.

Aside from clone teachers and a Student Council President that vomited up blood, what made this volume particularly hard to read was the intrusive presence of the author, who not only made aside comments to us, and talked at Yomiko within the narration, he actually inserts himself randomly in two places. The first is an utterly pathetic aside in which he tells us he’s at Anime Expo 2004 in his room working, watching girls playing volleyball outside his window. Later there is a second scene in which he gets a text message on his phone.

These, and oh, the fact that two volumes ago the story was left hanging, unresolved, made this a particularly irksome read. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4 I think it’s getting worse
Story – 7 It might have been okay as the second book of the series.
Characters – 7
Yuri – 0
Service – Other than the frenetic repetition of “Yomiko in school uniform!” – 1

Overall – I can’t even….

Do you remember the Monty Python album named Contractual Obligation? This book had that title written all over it.

As Volume 9 of R.O.D begins, Yomiko Readman and the head of Dokusensha, the woman known as China, are flying through the air on one of Yomiko’s paper airplanes, when the mountain that held the Dokusensha headquarters explodes.

Joker, having heard no word from Yomiko or Nancy for days, learns of the explosion and tunes in by satellite. When he sees that the “explosion” is an eruption of paper flowers, he gets the message from Yomiko loud and clear.

Yomiko and China enter the woods around Dokusensha HQ, only to encounter Ou-En and the 4 sisters and learn, belatedly, that Gentleman was seen at Dokusensha HQ. The news is received with solemnity, as it is accompanied by the news that Gentleman has slaughtered many of the Dokusensha members and destroyed HQ.

While sitting around the fire that night, trying to convince the sisters that she doesn’t have any intention of harming China, Yomiko learns that Ou-En feels affection for her – she remind him of his sister and of a previous lover. As they share their stories, they are joined by a tall, strapping and very naked man…Gentleman has arrived.

Nancy spends an important interlude with Drake’s team undressing and dressing in her normal bondage-gear outfit.

Meanwhile, in India, Nenene and Wendy are doing something. I’m not sure what, because they were on their way to China, but hey, whatever. While Wendy is out, Nenene reads more of Donny’s diary.

Donny recounts the time just before the British Library moved to its current location, when he’s begun meeting up with Yomiko at random times at the BL. Her 16th birthday is approaching and he promises that he’ll celebrate it with her. But Joker sends him out of town that day – and Donny doesn’t have Yomiko’s address or phone number. He runs into her later, and as he’s apologizing, a voice over loudspeaker invites them into the new BL. They take a private tour of the new location, shepherded by Joker’s voice, eventually finding themselves in the King’s library, surrounded by the original manuscripts of some of the world’s greatest literature. Yomiko says that this is like a dream, at which Donny asks her to dance. Alone in the King’s Library, they dance, while paper flowers rain down upon them.

When Yomiko asks for a kiss to make her night complete, Donny blows it completely and kisses her on the cheek.

So, with two novels to go, we really still don’t know much about the Gutenberk paper, Donny or Gentleman or Joker or Dokusensha or Nancy or, really, Yomiko.

Ratings:

Art – 4 Almost every picture was carefully crafted to skeeve me, except the one of Donny kissing Yomiko, which was just awkward.
Story – 7 Had some good bits and some less good
Characters – 8
Yuri – 0
Service – 8

Overall – 7

More Yomiko and Nenene dammit!

When we left Yomiko at the end of Volume 6 (before the unrelated romp that was Volume 7), she was imprisoned by Dokusensha and we had no idea what had happened to Nancy at all.

At the beginning of R.O.D., Volume 8, all is made clear.

Yomiko is indeed imprisoned by Dokusensha, but is released from her cage to have dinner with Ou-En and the woman who heads Dokusensha, who goes by the name “China.” China looks like a little girl, but is as old as Gentleman himself…indeed, she tells Yomiko that she was Gentleman’s wife, back in the ancient past when humans were first roaming the savannah of Africa. She tells Yomiko a history of humanity that, while compelling, is completely at odds with all written and fossil records. China agrees and explains that those have been faked in order to disguise the truth.

Meanwhile, Nancy has been imprisoned in a submarine deep in the ocean, to keep her from escaping  – if she should phase out of her bonds, there is quite literally nowhere to go – the water pressure would crush her before she could make it to land. She is not fed, has nothing to drink, is hung uncomfortably from her arms and is in her underwear, so she is cold. She is not allowed to sleep, either.

China takes Yomiko on a tour of the Dokusensha Library, which fills the cavity of a mountain. China speaks plainly to Yomiko, and asks her to join Dokusensha. Yomiko thanks her for the offer, but refuses. And repeatedly, politely, she asks after Nancy.

Yomiko is sent back to a nice room, rather than a cage, where Ou-En brings her books to read (and remains there, while she does, since he can neutralize her paper-user skills.) She is then visited by Faust who gives her a copy of the book Donny was reading when she first met him. He asks her again to marry him and when she refuses, declares that she is his enemy. The next time they meet, he says, he will kill her.

In the meantime, back in London, Wendy returns back to her apartment to find Nenene in near hysteria. Nenene tells her a horrific story about how she killed a man that day. Crying, shaking, Nenene recounts how a thief broke in to the apartment, and she killed him, then dragged his body to the dumpster in the back. Calmly, Wendy insists they go to the police. Nenene gets even more hysterical crying, and confesses that it was a lie…she needed to know how honest Wendy was. The two women hold each other for a bit until Nenene pulls herself together and admits that, while they were in Yomiko’s, Donny’s, apartment in Tokyo, she found Donny’s diary. She hasn’t read it, but she feels that she needed advice about what to do with it. Wendy, obviously, can be trusted, and so the two put their heads together.

Drake meets up with and puts together a squad to carry out a secret mission….

In the British Library, Joker, who has not heard from Yomiko or Nancy in days, is told that he needs to look at the satellite feed. Somewhere in China, a mountain is erupting with paper flowers.

Nancy is at her limit. Cold, hungry, thirsty, exhausted, she knows she doesn’t have much more left. When an enemy submarine approaches, the captain orders a torpedo to be shot at the other sub, and she sees her chance. Nancy phases out of her bonds and into the torpedo, where she comes within about 100 meters of the other sub. She moves through the water as quickly as possible and falls from the ceiling onto the captain of the British submarine Victorious, in front of Drake.

Wendy and Nenene board a plane for China, determined to find Yomiko and give her the diary.

Yomiko takes the book Faust gave her, sends up the paper flower signal for Joker to see where Dokusensha HQ is and escapes on a paper airplane…but not alone. She steals China, as well. With the help of a mysterious dragon that appears, Yomiko fights off China’s bodyguards  (five odious sisters, who I really could have done without.) China and Yomiko spend the night in a dark forest, while Yomiko tries to convince China to return to England with her. China rejects the offer, but asks Yomiko to take her somewhere before returning her to Dokusensha.

In front of a statue, Ou-En and Faust meet and Ou-En confirms that Faust has given a piece of the Guttenberg paper to Yomiko. Ou-En lifts the book he holds to destroy Faust where he stands….

And in China’s Forbidden City, Gentleman stands and inhales, remembering that nostalgic scent of dust.

The Epilogue is a short entry from Donny Nakajima’s Diary, describing the day he met Yomiko Readman.

Well hot damn, that was a book full of book. ^_^

While at MangaNEXT, Sean Gaffney asked me if the novel Joker and Wendy were evil or good Joker and Wendy and I had to say that, at the moment, they were neither. What we’ve seen of Wendy up until now is entirely admirable and Joker is ambiguous to the point of being a non-entity.

Unfortunately for us, Yomiko’s aerial battle was somewhat ruined by the annoying sisters who were her enemy. A good fight needs a good enemy and these were not. They were tedious in the extreme. To make up for it, however, Nancy’s escape was extra wonderful. And of course Yomiko’s stylish signal to Joker was special, as well.

But…I find myself waiting impatiently for Nenene and Yomiko to reunite. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – 7 If the Bodyguard sisters hadn’t been so tedious, it might have made an 8
Characters – 7 Where the sisters were awful, China’s about a zillion times more interesting than Gentleman to date. C.p., “need a good bad guy…”
Yuri – 0
Service – 6 Of course Nancy’s in her underwear. And we have to mention that every single time and make sure we have a picture of it. Snooze.

Overall – 8

I’m really looking forward to Volume 9. ^_^

R.O.D. Volume 6 ended with Yomiko in a precarious position. Quite literally, in fact, as she had been captured and put in a giant birdcage in Dokusensha’s Headquarters.

So of course, it’s no surprise at all for Read or Die,Volume 7 to open with Yomiko in her apartment in Jimbochou, rolling around in a pile of books; specifically the series that she she has been reading steadily for four days.

Wait, what?

After about 10 pages of detailed explanation about the “Zoolander Saga,” the scifi series in which Yomiko has immersed herself, I suddenly thought, “Am I reading the right book?” For some reason I expected Volume 7 to pick up at the end of Volume 6. But, no. Volume 7 is a gaiden, a side-story, as we would call it, that has nothing at all to do with the main plot.

Volume 7 continues on its merry way with a convoluted and utterly unfunny scenario in which Yomiko bathes in a large barrel on the roof of her building and is likely seen in her birthday suit by a neighbor who has nothing else to do during business hours.

Thankfully this ends and we’re left with Nenene and Yomiko taking a walk to the most secret store in all of Jimboucho, and thence to a bookstore where, through complications of plot, they end up running the store for an afternoon.

It is Nenene who gets to be cool this volume, taking out a disruptive creepy dude in the store, and garnering applause from the bookstore patrons.

This is followed by a short coincidence that ties the book up neatly and is notable for including the October 1972 volume of Shounen Jump, the significance of which I don’t know, but I bet the author does.

The final pages cover the tragic story of Dokusensha’s paper user Ou-En and his doomed little sister, the death of their parents and how he ended up at Dokusensha.

And so, this volume comes to a close after having been alternatively cute and frustrating  for a little over 200 pages and still, somewhere, Yomiko sits on a perch in a cage in Dokusensha’s HQ, faced with the choice of marrying Faust or being killed by him.

As a  side story, it was cute, but I felt like it was a whole-carbohydrate meal and I was craving protein. IMHO, any volume of R.O.D. without Yomiko going all paper master and kicking ass, is not the greatest use of a volume of R.O.D.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – Silly, but it had room to be awesome and just wasn’t – 5
Characters – Nenene – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 7

Overall – 6

Next volume, we return to our original programming.