We Were There Volume 14

May 29, 2012 by 3 Comments

I’ve somehow fallen horribly behind in reading We Were There. This is one of those manga that I tend to like to read after stockpiling several volumes. I think I own up to volume 6, and read up to volume 9 or so from the library, but it has been some time since I’ve read it. This is a shame because We Were There is one of those unique shoujo series that really skews a bit older, just because we actually see the characters grow up and become adults. So fans of more complex series like Nana or Sand Chronicles will enjoy We Were There, which tends to excel at showing the heartrending drama that good people can create for each other due to bad combinations of personality and circumstances.

Nanami and Yano were high school sweethearts, of a sort, as she fell in love with him but he is unable to move on due to the memory of his dead girlfriend. Complications ensue when Yano’s best friend Takeuchi also falls in love with Nana. Yano is also entangled with Yuri, the little sister of his former girlfriend. We Were There is one of the best manga series out there for readers wanting full-blown melodrama, and the 14th volume certainly delivers. Yano and Takeuchi confront each other over over Takeuchi’s rejected proposal. Although the situation is certainly grim, Obata infuses the confrontation with the type of bickering cameraderie that you’d expect from old friends. Yano and Takeuchi’s text balloons overlap, taking up a whole panel as they debate their respective relationships with Nanami, and learn that neither of them has slept with her yet. Takeuchi’s ring box gets batted around the floor like a hockey puck. Nanami thinks that she’s not being fair to Takeuchi, but she doesn’t want to be hurt or hurt other people. She’s still haunted by Yano, and expects that she might be going crazy which prompts a nice reference to the “Get thee to a nunnery” speech from Hamlet. An additional element of comedy in this volume happens when Nanami goes out to drown her sorrows with Aki, and they get so drunk that Aki mistakenly calls Yano to pick Nana up, thinking that she’s talking to Takeuchi. Yano takes care of Nanami when she’s almost deliriously drunk, and blurting out her true feelings the way only someone with no inhibitions can. She tells him that she’s decided that she’s not going to die before him, and she won’t die. Yano holds her and says “Don’t be stupid…I’m well aware that you’re not dead.”

Yano and Nanami are slowly being pulled back together again, but there are plenty of complications that prevent them from hopping back into a relationship. Yano’s guilt is still directing his actions, as he is living with and taking care of the Yamamoto family. Nanami is aware that she’s never going to feel more for anyone but Yano, but they’ve both changed so much as they’ve moved on into the adult world. They start tentatively communicating, after getting a push from Aki. Obata really packs an incredible amount of drama in one volume. As Yano and Nanami start to confide in each other again, she puts close ups of eyes and facial expressions in a larger scene of the couple standing in the city, other passers-by reduced to silhouette, showing that their focus has narrowed again to only each other.

Even though I tend to think of We Were There as a three hankie manga series, the moments of humor and lightness that Obata includes in this melodrama help keep the series from being too heavy or oppressive. That’s unusual in a series with this much angst! Also, while breakups and guilt might abound, most of the characters are remarkably sympathetic, just because the manga so clearly develops the quirks and personality traits that so clearly explain the motivations for their actions, hurtful as they might be sometimes. There are only two more volumes left, and this one was so packed with emotional confrontations, I’m hoping that Yano and Nanami get some measure of peace by the end of the series.

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.

Dawn of the Arcana Volume 4 by Rei Toma

May 21, 2012 by 3 Comments

One of the things I was happy to see in this volume of Dawn of the Arcana is the heroine Nakaba acting a bit more like an action hero. In the first volume she was introduced as not being hesitant about getting physical sometimes, and while in the subsequent volumes she hasn’t really been passive she has been busy dealing with her love/hate relationship with her new husband and the perils of living in a hostile country. She’s been busy!

Nakaba turns down Prince Akhil’s invitation to run away with him to his country, but not before she begins to get a sense of how valued her power of supernatural sight is. Akhil says “Your power is a gift. Believe in it. Unleash it. Let it be your strength.” Nakaba has a vision showing her a young girl being killed, and discovers that the girl is Bellinus’ younger sister Lemiria. After discovering a cache of weapons, Nakaba, Caesar, Bellinus and Loki decide to use the pretext of a honeymoon to travel towards the north, where the army might be targeting an Ajin village to test the weapons. Lemiria stows away, which isn’t good as the terrain begins to match up with Nakaba’s vision. Still she befriends Lemiria while being determined to protect her. Nakaba and Lemiria get menaced when they take a much needed shopping break and Nakaba shows herself to be quite tricky with a dagger. While she might have fended off one danger, she reflects that being able to strike a hit isn’t enough if she needs to protect someone and concludes “I have to get stronger.”

Caesar and Nakaba’s adorably awkward relationship continues to evolve on their honeymoon. Loki and Lemiria have an interesting encounter when she confronts him about his feelings for Nakaba, saying that he’s lonely, wounded, lovestruck, spiteful, but most of all, “a little frighting.” Loki just smiles a little bit and says “You don’t say…” Nakaba shows just how much she’s grown when she decides to spill her own blood to produce additional visions when Lemiria is in danger. By the end of the volume we see Nakaba evolving as she accepts her new power as well as her new country, and Bellinus has turned into a new ally. Slowly there’s a group of people forming around Nakaba that seem to be willing to protect her. This volume definitely seemed like the end of the first story arc in the series, and Toma’s writing and art has gotten more assured with each volume. Dawn of the Arcana is the type of series that rewards the reader the longer you keep reading it.


Review copy provided by the publisher.

Oresama Teacher Volume 9

May 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

It never fails, whenever I am a little bit stressed and I have a fresh volume of Oresama Teacher, it automatically gets moved to the top of my “to read” pile of manga. The combination of winning characters and ridiculous situations in this manga holds my attention much more than the other comedic manga I’ve tried, I think due to the fact that I am endlessly amused by the constant beat-downs administered by the cast of semi-reformed juvenile delinquents.

One of the fun things about this volume was the renewed focus on Okegawa, the former Bancho of the school. I’ve missed seeing him and his bizarre attempts at wooing Mafuyu with morse code and carrier pigeons. There’s something about his beady-eyed frowning expressions that is oddly endearing. Mafuyu joins forces with Okegawa in her male guise of Natsuo to track down the students who mysteriously go missing after five o’ clock. As one would expect from Oresama Teacher, the cause of the student disappearances has the most ridiculous explanation possible. A class is preparing a cross-dressing maid cafe for a school festival and has been kidnapping wayward students so they can practice refining their feminine wiles. Sure, drawing juvenile delinquents wearing maid costumes is an easy visual joke, but Tsubaki pushes the ridiculous situation to the extreme by portraying the difficulty they have portraying popular maid personalities like “the clumsy one” or “the little sister.” Mafuyu ends up solving the problem with her natural charisma by offering to train the gang of wayward maids. The problems aren’t over in this volume yet, as the rivalry between Midorigaoka and Kiyama is about to result in a major confrontation. Bancho sees through Mafuyu’s disguise and takes on the fight by himself after incapacitating her and taking back his title as gang boss. Even though there’s plenty of fists flying, there always seems to be an element of heart in what the characters are doing. The manipulation of the rival gang by one of Bancho’s disappointed lackeys ends up becoming a way for estranged friends to reconnect. And when Mafuyu and Bancho meet up at the end, she asks if he’s depressed he says “Make me feel better. Tell me I’m invincible and cool.” Mafuyu replies “You’re very strong…so your punches hurt a lot.” The power of juvenile delinquent friendships is so heartwarming! While there is a definite formula behind each volume of Oresama Teacher, I’m still genuinely entertained by the combination of punching, silliness, and occasional affirmations of friendship.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Hana Kimi 3 in 1 Edition Volume 2

May 15, 2012 by 2 Comments

One of the fun things about these new omnibus editions is being able to go back and revisit some of my favorite series like Hana Kimi. This volume covers books 4-6 of the original manga, and by the end of this volume the love triangle between Mizuki, Sano, and Nakatsu is firmly established. Hana Kimi is a silly series, and the characters go through the typical events in a shojo manga such as school festivals and class trips. But there’s always an elements of humor and the dramatic that make the story enjoyable even when the reader is facing yet another volume of manga focused on school festival hijinks. One of the things that makes this series amusing is the absolutely ridiculous situations and supporting cast. The school festival ends up being a competition between dorms, so Mizuki’s sporty group is pitted against gangs of drama students and menacing karate practitioners. The tension is heightened due to the intense rivalry between the dorm leaders, so all the cultural exhibits and sporting events that take place at the school festival are filled with tension. Of course, this being an all boys school in Japan portrayed in a shoujo manga, there is a cross dressing event where Mizuki’s dorm hosts a cafe and she has to pretend to be a boy pretending to be a girl and almost gets too much attention because her feminine disguise is too good.

Even though Mizuki is in some ways a typical peppy shoujo heroine, it is nice to see that her track and field skills still come in handy. She’s targeted and bullied by other teams who see her as a strong competitor for her dorm, and that ends up bringing her and Sano closer when he starts to worry about what might happen to her. While the school festival took up a bunch of story space, Mizuki also has to deal with a reporter trying to ferret out the reasons behind Sano’s return to track and Nakatsu’s sudden public confession of love.

Hana Kimi is helped a bunch by Nakajo’s very confident art. She’s able to render all the action sequences of high jumping and the menacing dangers of random flowerpots with ease, but she does a great job at making all of her characters visually and emotionally appealing. With such a large cast it is only to be expected that a lot of effort goes into dramatizing the subtle moments between Sano and Mizuki that drive their romance forward, but there’s still plenty to enjoy in seeing Nanba’s facial expressions as he works through being confronted with a romance from his past and struggles with his RA leadership duties.

One thing that might be frustrating is that Hana Kimi is a manga that stretches out the volume count simply by characters not telling each other their feelings. Sano’s acting a bit like Mizuki is his girlfriend, but he doesn’t tell her that he knows her secret. Mizuki is happy to be platonic friends with Sano, because she thinks that’s the best she can hope for. The only person who is ridiculously honest is Nakatsu, and he’s always around to serve as the hyperactive comic relief. But this is a series that I generally reread every two years or so, and even though I’m probably on my third go around with these volumes, I’m still finding Hana Kimi plenty entertaining.

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