Wall of Shojo Beat

September 16, 2012 by 6 Comments

For Day 1 of the Manga Moveable Feast, I decided to determine how many volumes of Shojo Beat manga I have by pulling everything off the shelves and stacking them up!

wall of shojo beat

I figured this would have an added benefit of helping me consolidate series when I put everything back, as I am not terribly organized when it comes to my personal library. One of the things that struck me when I was pulling volumes was how many series I had that predated the imprint, and are thus not included in this photo. Hana Kimi is currently being reprinted under the Shojo Beat line, so I could have pulled that. Other great pre-Shojo Beat series also include Boys Over Flowers and Kare First Love. I’ve sold off some series I thought I wouldn’t read again, and I have some volumes of manga in storage, so the total for the Shojo Beat manga I have readily available in my house is in the 200+ volumes range which is actually much less than I thought!

How many Shojo Beat volumes do you have?

Library Wars: Love and War Volume 8

August 23, 2012 by 4 Comments

Library Wars: Love and War Volume 8 by Kiiro Yumi

I knew that this volume was going to be dangerously adorable when I saw Iku and Dojo in an over-the-top romantic pose, complete with a ribbon in a heart shape proclaiming “Prince and Princess.” I’m always in favor of shoujo manga featuring prominent ribbons. Iku’s administrative woes are revealed to be caused by the machinations of Tezuka’s big brother – the evil library futurist. He asks for a meeting with Iku, hoping to win her to his side and use her to influence Tezuka. This meeting is where Iku’s so-called simplemindedness comes in handy, because she just flatly rejects him and his evil plans even when she has the opportunity to save herself from an administrative witch hunt. She says “If Tezuka learned that his big brother did something so shameful, he would be hurt. I mean how could I be so selfish? Tezuka is my friend.” Dojo shows up in a dress uniform halfway through the meeting and drags Iku away. What then follows is a totally cute scene where Dojo forces Iku to sit on a park bench because he can’t pat her head to praise her when she’s standing due to her high heels. Iku begins to ponder Dojo’s prince-like behavior, but when she gets a letter from Tezuka the Elder pointing making insinuations about Dojo and Iku’s princely ideals, she finally realizes that Dojo was the library officer who helped her save her favorite book from censorship when she was in school.

Iku spends the rest of the volume in full freakout mode as she attempts to process her own emotions and understand Dojo’s current feelings for her. There is a nice sideplot that shows Tezuka saving Shibazaki from unwanted male attention. It took eight volumes for Iku to finally realize her feelings for Dojo, but I have to say that as a fan of the series, it was worth the wait. There was much more focus on the emotions of the characters and their shifting relationships in this volume, as opposed to the usual library crime of the week. While I do enjoy all the paramilitary exercises about library books, I found this volume much more gripping than the past few volumes of Library Wars. It looks like this series is up to ten volumes in Japan, and I’m guessing it will get wrapped up in a little bit now that the central romance is finally starting to move forward. I’m looking forward to Dojo’s reaction once he knows that Iku knows he’s her prince.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

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.

Dawn of the Arcana Volume 5 by Rei Toma

August 9, 2012 by 2 Comments

Every volume of Dawn of the Arcana usually has a few quirky moments that keep me hooked on the series. In volume 5 we see the continuation of the trip that Nakaba and her group of friends embarked on in order to warn the Ajin of the upcoming attack from Prince Caesar’s unscrupulous relatives. Before the Ajin that we’ve seen have looked mostly human with some slight animal characteristics, but the ones who live in the Ajin village are much more like beasts walking upright. The feline Leo and Gadi great the humans with suspicion, but the group of adventurers gets taken to the cute and fluffy village leader to deliver their warning. Seeing the different forms of the Ajin was intriguing, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of their culture revealed in future volumes. The other aspect of this volume that I was amused by was that so far Nakaba has been dealing with having an Arcana, or magical power, all on her own, but suddenly we see more people with Arcana popping out of the woodwork. Lemiria reveals that she has a power that might explain why her older brother Bellinus has managed to survive so well in a hostile court environment. Although Nakaba and her companions came to warn the Ajin about the destructive power of new weapons of war, the suspicious Leo thinks he can defend the village all on his own with the Arcana of Fire.

The other thing I enjoy about Dawn of the Arcana is that it is so character-driven. With so many people having magical powers, it would be easy to fall into the trap of featuring a bunch of magic-centered action, without much character development. Nakaba’s journey to meet the Ajin causes her and Loki to reaffirm their friendship. Caesar’s support furthers his relationship with Nakaba as well. Knowing that Lemiria has a magical power as well makes her almost the perfect girlfriend for Nakaba, someone who hasn’t had many friends in her life before. Much of the volume focuses on Nakaba’s attempt to save the Ajin, and when she is thrown into the company of Caesar’s older brother Cain, at first she sees an opportunity to bond with him because they’ve both been judged harshly for their appearance in the past. Nakaba’s growing powers of observation combined with Lemiria’s advice cause her to navigate the situation with greater insight. I just wish that the artwork had slightly more detailed backgrounds that would contribute more to giving the world the characters navigate through more depth. Five volumes in, and there are still too many panels of characters talking to each other with just white or minimal backgrounds, and fewer illustrations that really serve to show how the Ajin village is all that different from the other places that Nakaba has visited. Overall, this volume was another solid entry for this fun fantasy series and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next as Nakaba becomes a more self-assured princess.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Jiu Jiu Volume 1 by Touya Tobina

July 19, 2012 by 3 Comments

Jiu Jiu Volume 1 by Touya Tobina

I’m always curious when a new title is added to the Shojo Beat imprint, since Shojo Beat titles make up a majority of my reading list. I’m also happy to see that in Jiu Jiu we have a title with a quirky heroine, a general trend I am happy to see reflected in many of the recently translated manga series. Jiu Jiu looks like a promising shoujo twist on the monster hunting manga genre.

Takamichi is born into a family of Dark Hunters. When her twin brother is killed, she’s the sole heir. For companionship, she’s given a pair of Jiu Jiu – familiars who can switch form from wolf to human. In human form, Snow and Night are handsome teenage boys, but they’re really only three years old. Takamichi’s life becomes even more complicated when Snow and Night decide that they are going to start attending school with their mistress. As a heroine, Takamichi is harsh and guilt-ridden. She’s haunted by her brother’s death and often deals harshly with Snow and Night because she doesn’t want to get close to anybody. Takamichi also has a strong sense of duty, fulfuling her duties as a monster hunter while not wanting her Jiu Jiu to come along with her because she doesn’t want them to get hurt. This is the source of the main tension in the book, because Snow and Night want to be with their mistress at all times. Their names reflect their appearance and personalities, with Snow being pale with a bright and playful personality, while Night has a darker complexion and is more reserved and intuitive.

Visually, Jiu Jiu is dense with sometimes little transitions between scenes. It required more of my concentration to read than usual, and might have benefited from being a tad more sparse. The art style made me wonder if Tobina was somehow a Frankenstein mangaka created from mashing together Arina Tanemura and Hakase Mizuki. It was an interesting contrast reading Kaze Hikaru right after Jiu Jiu, because the two manga couldn’t be more different in terms of the art. One of the things I always appreciate in manga is an artist with an individualistic style, and Tobina’s thin line and the stylized spindly limbs of her characters emphasizes the animalistic nature of the Jiu Jiu. She switches back and forth between kawaii howling wolf pups and the demons that Takamichi faces. The first volume of Tobina’s other manga, Clean Freak Fully-Equipped had a similar focus on a protagonist with psychological issues. The combination of haunted heroine, stylized art, and a potentially interesting twist on monster hunting manga has me looking forward to the next volume.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

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