Month: November 2011

Categories
Manga Reviews

Itsuwaribito Volumes 2 and 3

I feel a little bit divided about Itsuwaribito. In theory I really like the idea of a shonen manga hero who gets by with cleverness instead of devoting himself to fighting and mystical power-ups. In practice, the stories that rely on Utsuho’s lying sometimes seem a bit artificial. Still, this ends up being one of the more entertaining new shonen series from Viz.

Itsuwaribito Volume 2 by Yuuki Iinuma

The second volume of this series shows Utsuho doing what most shonen heroes do after the first volume – start putting together a team. He parts ways with the acerbic medicine man Yakuma, each of them vowing never to cross paths again, only for them to run across each other one panel later. A demonic man who hates liars is stacking up bodies in a nearby forest. Yakuma thinks he hears a cry for help, but Utsuho is determined not to get involved. Venturing into the forest forces a confrontation with the mass murderer. The character design of the bad guy was genuinely creepy, as he has a rough triangle for a mouth and a grid of teeth. Utsuho is forced into a confrontation when Yakuma is cornered. They then turn to a different type of quest, visiting an island that is a place of exile for liars like Utsuho.

When they arrive on the island, it is clear that it is full of traps and trickery. They get attacked before they even reach the shore. Yakuma’s medicine chest gets stolen and they meet a faction of people on the island lead by a young girl named Neya, who promises to fetch the missing chest and comes right back. As the minutes tick by Yakuma dares to speculate that Utsuho might have gotten tricked by a girl, provoking frantic denials at the thought that the master liar was lied to.

Itsuwaribito Volume 3 Yuuki Iinuma

The third volume focuses on different types of families. Accomplished female liar Neya is actually the main caretaker for a small village of people trapped in exile on the island, defending themselves from rival gangs. If she has the opportunity to leave will she build a new life for herself and pave the way for the people she cares for, or will her sense of obligation compel her to stay in exile? The main menace in this volume comes from a man with a bandaged face who seems to be particularly interested in Utsuho’s animal sidekick Pochi and determined to bring misery to all the humans he sees. For all of Utsuho’s crafty lying and cool exterior, when one of his companions is in trouble he doesn’t hesitate to defend them.

Although I confess I had a few moments of internal eye-rolling when Utsuho ended up on an island of liars, in general I’m finding Itsuwaribito entertaining. It blends humor with the occasional poignant moment about the value of friendship, and while the general structure of the plot with Utsuho picking up a motley crew of companions on his journeys is pretty typical of shonen manga I’m still enjoying the series so far. I’m looking forward to see what happens with Neya, as she provides Utsuho with a counterpart that is equally adept at lying to react to.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Categories
Manga Reviews

Story of Saiunkoku Volume 5

Story of Saiunkoku Volume 5 by Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura

This continues to be one of my favorite current shoujo series because it is just so well crafted. It manages to juggle a large cast of handsome men with distinct personalities, and the main character Shurei is one of those rare shoujo girls that inspires total sympathy in the reader. The first story in this volume was hilarious as it provided a nice twist on the somewhat stale plot point of the heroine getting incapacitated by a cold and needing someone to nurse her back to health. Shurei is stuck in bed, with older adopted brother Seiran looking after her. This is necessary, because her father’s attempts at nursing involve burying her beneath over a dozen blankets, and brewing his horrific “special recipe ginger broth.” Shurei’s house soon becomes host to a parade of visitors as Ran and Koyu shows up and Seiran orders them to make something for Shurei to eat before her father destroys the kitchen. Minister Ko and Shurei’s secret uncle Reishin lurk outside and even the Emperor manages to sneak into her room to check up on her, with unfortunate results.

A new cast member is introduced when a young scholar comes to town and seems to be a target for a gang. Unfortunately for the gang the boy manifests an entirely different personality when he drinks and handily bests them at gambling and fighting only to lose an important tablet in the process. He wakes up in the most notorious brothel in town, where Shurei just happens to be wrapping up a part-time job. One of the things I love about this manga is the unconventional ways the characters act. Shurei gets a job as an assistant bookkeeper in the red light district and is anxious about hiding her job from her father and Seiran. Unbeknownst to her, her father visits the madam Kocho to ask her to give Shurei the benefit of feminine advice that she’d lack because she’s growing up without a mother, and Seiran makes a similar visit as well. The madam just happens to also be one of the leaders of the criminal syndicate that rules the underworld in the city, and she’s not happy to see that young scholars in town for the civil service exams are getting targeted. The young victim Eigetsu ends up becoming friends with Shurei.

I enjoy the way humor is interlaced with character development in Story of Saiunkoku. In this volume Shurei’s ignorance of her father’s past as a government assassin is played for laughs as she’s utterly confused as to why threatening men near her suddenly fall down or why a table where a couple of misogynists are sitting collapses abruptly. There’s an element of warm humor that is present to some degree in all of the stories, and the way Shurei manages to surround herself with people who care about and support her makes Story of Saiunkoku enjoyable to read.

Categories
Manga Reviews

Dengeki Daisy Volume 7

Dengeki Daisy Volume 7 by Kyousuke Motomi

The cover design of this volume perfectly represents the odd combination of plot lines that end up getting featured in Dengeki Daisy. Kurosaki is tenderly kissing a tearful Teru’s hand on the front cover, and the back cover features the deranged Akira with a maniacal grin and a creepy red eye. The warm and fluffy part of this volume occurs when Teru and Kurosaki A mysterious man keeps popping up near Teru and she and Kurosaki gradually realize that it is the elusive and dangerous attacker Akira.

The first part of the book shows Teru and Kurosaki fighting off a manageable foe – one of the teachers at the school has decided that Kurosaki is a bad influence on Teru and is determined to separate them. Teru vows to prove that her grades won’t suffer because of the time she spends helping out with janitorial tasks and makes an impulsive bet involving her class standings and Kurosaki’s hair, only to abruptly fall ill the night before the exam. A boy Teru saw at the bus stop and was curious about because he reminded her of her brother abruptly kisses her, and she’s devastated. Kurosaki as Daisy sends her an emotional text, then quickly backs away. It is fairly typical of the dance that these characters do, as they grow closer but still maintain the polite fiction that separates them. The kissing bandit is of course Akira, and he engineers a situation that results in Teru learning a new piece in the puzzle about her brother’s death.

Despite the fact that the central mystery behind Teru’s brother hasn’t been fully explained and the series is now up to volume seven, I’m still interested in seeing what happens next in this manga. The relationship between Teru and Kurosaki is one of the more original pairings in shoujo manga, and despite the gulf in their ages and personalities I can’t help but hope they get together in the end. I’m perfectly happy reading an almost indefinite number of volumes before that ending appears.

Review copy provided by the publisher