Dengeki Daisy, Vol. 12

May 14, 2013 by 1 Comment



Dengeki Daisy Volume 12 by Kyousuke Motomi

It occurred to me as I was reading volume 12 of Dengeki Daisy that more shoujo titles should feature yacht kidnappings as standard plot points. Think about it! Instead of evil male models, frenemies, and surprise fiances, there would be random kidnappings taking place on luxurious ships! Wouldn’t it lend a bit of excitement and suspense to most manga?

I enjoy Dengeki Daisy so much because it portrays a slightly unconventional romance with some elements of techno thriller action. As you might guess, volume 12 features a yacht kidnapping, as Teru and her hacker/school janitor/almost boyfriend Kurosaki team up with the rest of the Scooby Gang to rescue Rena from her evil fiance Morizono. They storm the party in a variety of disguises. Kurosaki pretends to be a clueless foreigner. Teru gets all dolled up and stages an elaborate and hilarious distraction by pretending to be Morizono’s spurned lover. Hasegawa disguises himself as a waiter. As the group secures Rena, Kurosaki stumbles across yet another hacking conspiracy. Akira’s presence is almost negligible, as Kurosaki works to foil the plan to sell the Jack Frost virus and encounters someone else from his past – a person who started the tragic actions that lead to the creation of the Jack Frost virus in the first place and the death of Teru’s brother.

Dengeki Daisy always manages to cover a wide variety of emotional scenes in an effortless way. There’s the fun caper of the team storming the yacht where Rena is held captive, followed by a celebration afterwards where Rena and Hasegawa start inching towards the development of a new relationship. Nothing is ever simply happy in Dengeki Daisy for long though, as Kurosaki is horribly affected with his encounter with the mysterious new hacker. Kurosaki is in many ways the exact opposite of the cool shoujo hero, and the level of vulnerability he displays to Teru shows the reader just how traumatized he is as well as how much he trusts her. They’re one of my favorite shoujo manga couples of all time, and each volume of the series tends to show a new aspect of their relationship. Even though each conspiracy tends to lead to yet another conspiracy and I am wondering why every hacker that shows up in this manga has long bangs, after twelve volumes of Dengeki Daisy I’m still looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Shojo Beat Quick Takes – Oresama Teacher #10 and A Devil and Her Love Song #4

August 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Oresama Teacher #10 by Izumi Tsubaki

Oresama Teacher has settled into a bit of a predictable formula, but Tsubaki’s particular brand of ridiculous idiocy never fails to cheer me up. This volume focuses on Yui, the ninja and erstwhile spy on the Public Morals Club for the fiendish school council. He decides that Mafuyu and Hayasaka have to endure his particular brand of ninja training, with hilarious results as his modern substitutes for traditional ninja training apparatus never seem to quite work out. Mafuyu has to struggle to get certification for the Public Morals Club, which involves tangling with Hojo, a student council lackey with a major crush on Yui. It is amusing, because while Mafuyu is incredibly dense when it comes to her own feelings, she quickly figures out the undercurrents between Hojo and Yui while Yui remains absolutely oblivious. Deranged ninja antics are always good for a laugh, and while it was nice to have the focus of this volume on a different character, I’m hoping that the next volume swings back to feature more scenes with Hayasaka and Takaomi. I’d also like to see some more scenes that show Mafuyu’s emotional development as she works through her issues with juvenile delinquency. Also, I feel like there was less face-punching in this volume than I’ve come to expect from Oresama Teacher.

A Devil and Her Love Song #4 by Miyoshi Tomori

Ordinarily I would start to get a little frustrated with a series where characters spend a large chunk of time discussing their feelings and interactions, but in A Devil and Her Love Song Maria’s forthright pronouncements and abrasive personality put her into some interesting situations. I might not feel as much of an emotional connection to this story as compared to some of my other favorite shoujo manga, but I do enjoy seeing how Maria’s presence seems to force the people around her to change and grow. In this volume, we are still dealing with the Machiavellian shenanigans around a school concert that the media is about to film. Maria’s evil teacher is planning on using her alleged “reformation” as a way of bringing favorable publicity to the school, and Hana is going along with the plan so she can show herself as a saintly angel of forgiveness. The only problem is that Maria is totally aware of the plan and decides to participate willingly just due to her desire to sing with her classmates. Maria encourages her previous bully Ayu to express her true feelings, with the result that the entire set-up gets derailed when Ayu can’t stand the blatant hypocrisy and lies around her. Maria faces even more obstacles, but she ends up putting “a lovely spin” on the whole situation, managing to salvage the concert. It’ll be interesting to see the fallout resulting from this volume, since various classmates have had emotional breakthroughs and learned more about themselves. I’m predicting that Maria will never be popular, but I’m guessing that her circle of friends will grow a bit and she’s going to treasure the loyalty of the people who actually appreciate her forthright yet slightly odd personality. Overall, this was yet another strong volume for this series.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

A Devil and Her Love Song Volume 3

May 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I have to say, the cover for the third volume of A Devil and Her Love Song is one of my favorite recent manga covers. It does a great job portraying the characters’ personalities as Maria is calmly holding her necklace while Shin looks all flustered by the attention of being on a manga cover, throwing up his hand as if he is fending off paparazzi. Like Dawn of the Arcana, A Devil and Her Love Song is one of those shoujo titles that keeps getting better with each subsequent volume. The first two volumes grabbed my attention with the novelty of Maria’s personality but there were still occasionally some awkward transitions and exposition that sometimes took me out of the story. Volume 3 dives into a common situation in shoujo manga, the mean nice girl, but it does it in a very entertaining way that is made more interesting by Maria’s reactions to her new “frenemy.”

Hana is a returning student who has been absent for Maria’s arrival due to illness. When she meets with her teacher she comments on Maria’s confiscated necklace and receives it as a gift. All the mean girls welcome Hana back, and when she’s introduced to Maria Hana manages to call attention to Maria’s facial expressions by immediately bowing and apologizing because she thinks Maria is mad at her. When Maria asks Yasuke about Hana, he comments “She’s a nice girl” but Maria notices that his expression looks forced. When Hana notices that the class is divided over the upcoming choral competition she exclaims “We should be doing this together!” Maria thinks that Hana is the exact opposite of her. Where Maria comes out and says exactly what she’s thinking, Hana gets her way with passive-aggressive niceness and faux apologies. Maria thinks that even though Hana says nice things, she feels uneasy. Hana’s true motivations come out when she sees how close Hana is to Yasuke, and Hana ends up making things even worse for Maria by playing the victim whenever she has an audience. Maria struggles to hold together her choral rehearsals and her new core group of friends continues to encourage her. It was nice to see that Shin had more of a role in this volume after the Yasuke-centric volume 2.

A Devil and Her Love Song is turning into a very entertaining soapy manga. There’s plenty of underhanded plots to be found with the teachers and students that target Maria, but the fact that her reactions are almost the exact opposite of what the reader would expect from a more typical shoujo heroine makes this manga seem fresh. All the Machiavellian plots are balanced out by the slowly growing friendships that Maria has with Yasuke, Shin, and Tomoyo. There’s a core element of sweetness that balances out the fact that Maria is navigating in a very cynical world. I’m looking forward to volume 4 to see if Maria’s unique solution is going to save her concert and repair some of the toxic relationships in her school.

A Devil and Her Love Song Volume 2

April 2, 2012 by 1 Comment

I enjoyed the first volume of A Devil and Her Love Song, and was curious to see if the next volume lived up to the potential of the first one. Though there were some rough spots, I found myself still intrigued by this new shoujo manga.

Maria and Yusuke go to visit their classmate Tomoyo, who has been staying home from school. I was amused to see that Tomoyo, who goes out of her way to be bland and agreeable to everyone at school, is actually a closet goth. They just stay for a visit and don’t confront Tomoyo about her coming back to school, but Maria forces the issue when she shows up at Tomoyo’s house then next morning. She goads Tomoyo into saying what she really feels, then comments “That angry look isn’t flattering on you…but it isn’t half bad.” When Tomoyo goes back to school she finally speaks out and defends Maria against the group of popular girls who have been bullying her. Shin stops Maria from reacting when the situation in the classroom gets out of hand and Yusuke goes to confront their teacher about his hypocritical ways. Instead, the teacher decides to set Maria up as a scapegoat to cover for his lack of discipline in the classroom. He decides that Maria will be leading the class choral performance, and she has to scramble to put something together when she’s ostracized by her classmates. Yusuke is singled out as an ally of Maria’s and he says that he likes her in front of the class. Maria isn’t sure if he genuinely likes her, or if he’s trying to protect her. She pushes him away, telling him that if he defends her “it’s suffocating.”

Maria attempts to pull together a choral performance despite the fact that the entire class isn’t cooperating. It is fun to see the random friendship that she’s developed with Tomoyo, as they always seem to wind up in a corner of the school discussing the day’s events. Yusuke hovers around, determined to help. Yusuke drags Shin into the choral performance too, since he can play the piano. The class grows more and more tense, provoking even more of a confrontation between Maria’s allies and the classmates who have decided to hate her. Maria’s habit of blurting out whatever she’s thinking forces all of these conflicts into the open. Someone more socialized might put their head down and attempt to ignore everything, but Maria comments on what everybody is doing, making everyone confront their behavior and reactions. Things are getting pretty bad at school, so it is easy to see why Maria’s gotten kicked out of school so many times before. But the small core group of friends that she’s developing is something new for her, and she’s actually trying to engage with other people in a way she doesn’t quite seem capable of. This series continues to be very promising, I’m just hoping that there is more Shin in the next volume, since this one was more centered on Maria and Yusuke.

Review copy provided by the publisher

A Devil and Her Love Song Volume 1

February 14, 2012 by 3 Comments



A Devil and Her Love Song, Vol. 1 by Miyoshi Tomori

If you find yourself fatigued by ordinary shoujo manga, A Devil and Her Love Song is a great series to try read to restore your enthusiasm for the genre. It has an unconventional heroine, two quirky guys, and the promise of an examination of teen social issues with actual psychological depth. The “Devil” referred to in the title is Maria Kawai. She’s introduced to the reader as the object of derision on the subway, as she sits without getting up to offer her seat to the old lady suffering in front of her. When she gets off at her stop, she jostles the sleeping old man sitting next to her and whispers in the old woman’s ear “You must be a lousy pickpocket if you’re targeting a sleeping man, you old crook.” Maria possess incredible powers of intuition. She can instantly see the true feelings and motivations of the people around her. She also has absolutely no filter on her speech, and the habit of bluntly sharing her insights. This ensures that Maria is going to be a target wherever she goes.

Maria starts a new school and soon attracts the attention of an outgoing boy named Yasuke who offers to help her settle in. She comments “I can tell you’re not really a people person, you don’t have to force yourself to talk to me.” Yasuke comments to his friend Shin, “How did she know? I’m upbeat, I’m fun, everybody loves Yasuke!” Shin says that Maria is either being malicious or thoughtful, but in either case he wants nothing to do with her. Maria soon finds herself singled out and bullied, but Shin and Yasuke help her in different ways. With his outgoing facade, Yasuke advises that Maria needs to put “a lovely spin” on what she says so people will get along with her. This results in Maria developing a terrifyingly mannered tendency to tilt her head to the side while saying something horrible to people. Maria begins to start caring about the way she relates to people, seeing “a lovely spin” as a way to view people in the most adorable light possible, while Yasuke attempts to explain that it is a mask he takes off at the end of the day.

Despite Shin’s protests he’s drawn to Maria, intervening in a number of bullying incidents while Maria returns the favor by finding his secret hiding place and dumping water on him when he’s taking a smoke break. Maria is actually able to talk to Shin in a direct way without driving him away, and she actually shares some of her own feelings and experiences instead of commenting on his behavior as though he is the subject of a psychological experiment. Tomori’s character designs are all very attractive, and she does a good job portraying Maria’s cool outer shell when dealing with other people contrasting with the more natural expressions Maria exhibits when she thinks about her own feelings.

I put down A Devil and Her Love Song feeling incredibly intrigued to find out how Maria is going to grow and evolve as a character. She has incredible reserves of inner strength, but I think it will take a long time before she’s able to make true friends or navigate the treacherous hallways of high school without incident. Maria is a refreshing change from the peppy or passive heroines that populate many shoujo series, and I’m excited to see where she’ll wind up.