Tag: one peace books

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I Hear the Sunspot

I Hear the Sunspot by Yuki Fumino

I Hear the Sunspot was a delightful surprise, and not a title that I expected to see One Peace Books license. For those of you who have been wishing for some slice of life character-driven shounen-ai manga, this title will easily fulfill your manga cravings.

I Hear the Sunspot traces the developing friendship between a couple of college students. Kohei, a student with hearing difficulties who keeps himself isolated from his classmates. Taichi is an outspoken semi-slacker who finds it difficult to keep a full-time job. Taichi is also perpetually hungry. After accidentally stumbling on one of Kohei’s hiding spots, Taichi finds himself gifted with Kohei’s lunch after staring at it with hungry eyes. The entire exchange is wordless on Kohei’s part and Taichi checks up on him with other students afterwards, finding out that Kohei needs volunteer note takers in order to support his studies.

One of the things I liked so much about this series was Fumino’s art. She has a great facility with facial expressions, where Taichi’s open, smiling mannerisms contrast with Kohei’s carefully cultivated almost expressionless looks as he is repeatedly confronted by someone who isn’t going to take “No” for an answer in his attempts at friendship. Taichi turns out to be a less than stellar note taker due to his habits of falling asleep or zoning out in class, but Kohei pays him for his efforts by bringing him extraordinarily delicious lunches. Kohei gradually begins to open up more thanks to Taichi’s efforts to include him in regular school activities, and the slice of life school stories mixed with small scenes showing the depth of this new friendship made I Hear the Sunspot a pleasure to read.

One of my favorite moments in the book was when Taichi finds himself in conversation with a girl who asks about Kohei in a really intrusive way, clearly indicating that she is invested in the idea of herself acting benevolent to a person with a disability. Taichi gets angry, and his reaction is just on the edge of being a little too upset, to the point where I started to wonder if he was romantically jealous in addition to wanting to protect his new friend. Character driven moments like this are why I Hear the Sunspot is now one of my favorite manga of the past year. I’m happy to hear that One Peace Books is also picking up at least one of the sequel volumes, and I’m so curious to find out what happens next in this slowly developing romance.

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Rising of the Shield Hero Vol 1

Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 1 by Aneko Yusagi

It has been some time since I’ve read a light novel, and so when One Peace sent me Rising of the Shield Hero, I decided to give it a try. The plot centers around Naofumi Iwatani, a disaffected otaku who abruptly finds himself transported into an alternate universe where he suddenly has to take on the role of the Shield Hero, on a quest that closely resembles a Japanese RPG.

I found the first couple chapters of the book a bit difficult to get into, partially because Naofumi is such an unsympathetic character who narrates his daily existence with flat declarative sentences. He soon finds himself in possession of an odd book which promptly transports him to another world, along with 3 other young men. They are the heroes of the sword, spear, bow, and shield respectively. Naofumi gets the shield, and finds himself scorned and mistreated partially due to his attitude and partially due to his only having a defensive weapon. The heroes all are assigned companions, and have to go out and get more experience to improve their abilities, just like one would have to grind in a typical game. Naofumi gets a female sidekick named Myne, but she promptly betrays him and leaves him penniless and alone.

The events centering around Myne’s betrayal of Naofumi were my least favorite part of the book, because she claims that he attempted to rape her. A woman making a false rape claim is not a plot point I enjoy reading, and shortly after his betrayal, Naofumi gets yet another female sidekick in the form of a slave tanuki girl named Raphtalia. He decides that he might enjoy owning a female slave because he now hates all women. Naofumi and Raphtalia embark on leveling up in their world by killing a number of low level demons that resemble orange balloons. Each time Naofumi defeats a different monster, his shield gains additional abilities. This was the part of the book I enjoyed the most, because Naofumi can’t use weapons due to his status as a shield hero. So he has to have a companion around to actually stab at things in order to get points and loot, and he manages to be fairly clever about coming up with ways to make money to get better equipment. Since he’s the shield hero, Naofumi has a great deal of personal defense. He decides to carry around orange balloon monsters underneath his cloak, and if people give him a hard time, he sets them loose. Naofumi’s bartering and blackmailing of the townspeople in order to get better equipment were one of the more amusing aspects of the book

Naofumi has an incredibly selfish way of thinking about things, but his actions often turn out to be less self-serving than I was expecting. Despite his dark thoughts, he actually treats Raphtalia more like a younger sister or companion. However, as she levels up, she grows up, so there is undoubtedly a romance ahead between the two main characters, which seems skeevy to me, since Naofumi met her when she was 10 years old.

The book needed a good solid pass from a copy editor, there were quite a few punctuation and spelling errors. The illustration included in the book were quite nice. Overall, this was a mixed read for me. I enjoyed aspects of the world building and Naofumi’s ingenuity. His general crankiness is also a nice contrast from the type of character that gets caught up in an adventure in another world. The flat, non-descriptive writing style made The Rising of the Shield Hero a bit of a slog in the earlier chapters, and I find myself creeped out by the prospect of romance developing in the later volumes.

riseshieldhero

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Cosplay Basics

Cosplay Basics by by Yuki Takasou, Rumine, and Kashiko Kurobuchi

This is an English translation of a Japanese book that provides an introduction to cosplay with chapters on tips, shopping, and costume construction, interspersed with short manga chapters showing a seasoned cosplayer showing a newbie the ropes. A magical girl character is used as the focus for the whole book, so this will be most useful for folks who are interested in feminine cosplay.

I don’t think anyone would really be able to construct a costume from start to finish with only the information given in this book, as there’s not enough detailed information given about measuring yourself, making patterns, adjusting fit, etc. There are several sections with step-by-step instructions, but I think someone making pattern pieces based on the information in the book would need to do a bit of experimenting on their own to come up with something usable. But like the title suggests, it does provide a basic overview of the topic, and a reader would be able to take the terminology in the book and then look up a more detailed youtube tutorial about placing darts, for example. There are sections dedicated to cosplay specific topics like wig styling, photographing etiquette, posing like your character, and now to retouch your own photos of your cosplay before you post them online.

Cosplay Basics would be a good addition to library collections for libraries that have active anime clubs or other similar programming like ToshoCons. If I had a young teen newbie cosplayer to hand a book to, I would probably combine this volume with another book that had more of a general focus on sewing and construction principles. The short chapters combined with manga make it easy to dip in and out of the book while exploring different aspects of cosplay.