Tag: shoujo

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Manga Reviews

Gatcha Gacha Volumes 5 and 6

Now that the final volume has come out, I’m catching up with the last half of the series. The more I read of Gatcha Gacha, the more I like it. It combines a certain gleeful trashiness with some affecting emotional moments. It also can occasionally be genuinely weird. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this series to someone who feels burnt-out on typical shoujo manga. I can’t imagine myself being so entertained by the worn out storyline of a character coming back from the dead with amnesia in any other series. Yuri and Yabe are dating, and he’s cleaned up his act by transforming into a proper looking Japanese boy. The blond hair is gone, as is the weedy looking goatee. While Yuri might be momentarily blissfully happy with her new love, trouble lurks on the horizon in the person of Kanako, a girl who looks just like Motoko’s deceased crazy sister. Yabe is shaken by his dead girlfriend’s doppelganger. Hirao watches this unfold from the sidelines, and while he’s still nursing feelings for Yuri he tells her that he’ll support her and Yabe however he can.

Kanako is of course Motoko’s sister, but her amnesia has left her unable to remember Yabe. Here is where Tachibana goes for the kill, because seeing Yabe’s conflicted expressions when he looks at her is just gut-wrenching. Kanako was farmed out to some distant relatives who have raised her as a foster daughter. The amnesia has caused her twisted personality to fade, leaving behind a rather sweet girl who still manages to be violent through subconscious reflex actions. Gatcha Gacha being Gatcha Gacha, issues between characters seem to be resolved through gang beat downs that lead to people talking about their feelings instead of non-violent confrontation. Kanako is kidnapped by a bunch of goons, and Motoko and Yabe go to rescue her. Yuri knows that as Yabe leaves, he’s also leaving her. She begs him not to go and he says “I know if I stayed and really learned to love you…I know I could finally be happy. But…I’m sorry. I’m not that good of a man.”

Tachibana does what few manga creators are capable of by making her main female character simultaneously an object of ridicule and sympathy for the reader. Yuri is left alone yet again, crying to the heavens “Will I ever be happy?” She’s absolutely silly and it is hard not to root for her to eventually be happy even though her basic personality is that of a happy cute puppy dog who keeps getting kicked around but still comes back for more.

Volume six starts with a return to the status quo. Kanako has regained her memory and is acting as crazily possessive of her sister and Yabe as ever. She starts to target Yuri but is warned off by Motoko in dramatic fashion. Hirao sees that Yuri may be losing her hair due to stress and he goes to extreme lengths to hide her tiny bald spot, running to a department store to buy a hairstick and devising a new hairstyle for her in an attempt to cover it up so Yuri and other people don’t know about it. He finally tells Yuri his feelings, and she begins to wonder if she can ever be attracted to him. He seems perfect, but she only feels any sort of chemistry with losers and jerks. Is the ultimate bad boy for Yuri actually Motoko? She continues to dress more masculine and rampages around like she always does. Yuri comments to Motoko that she’s physically incapable of being attracted to nice guys and says “What does it say about you that if you were a guy, I’d ask you out in a heartbeat?” Motoko’s face goes absolutely still and then she carries on the conversation with a smile.

The new, forthright Hirao might actually be enough of a loser to inspire feelings of attraction from Yuri when she finally spots him doing something loser-like. Hirao and Yabe begin to act a little more friendly towards each other. I’m not confident that a relationship between Yuri and Hirao will work out, but that’s the way things seem to be headed for now. Even though Gatcha Gacha is very much a shoujo series, Tachibana’s unique and darkly cynical sensibility makes it seem refreshing. With the two main female characters not being afraid to indulge in violence, it is actually fairly entertaining to see just Yuri slap Kanako across the face for being a brat, instead of slinking off to wallow in hurt feelings. When Tachibana’s characters do talk about their feelings, they are amazingly blunt and forthright. There are only two more volumes left for me to read, and I’m a little disappointed that Gatcha Gacha only lasted for eight volumes. I’m looking forward to the end, but I have no idea what to expect. With most shoujo series I pretty much know how the relationships will play out by the end. I’m really not sure what Tachibana is going to do next, and that’s a large part of Gatcha Gacha’s appeal.

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Manga Reviews

Shojo Beat Quick Takes: Stories, Roses, and Friends

The Story of Saiunkoku Volume 2 by Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura

The manga keeps moving along at a healthy pace. I was actually surprised at some of the revelations contained in this volume about Seiran’s true nature and the background of Shurei’s father, because I thought I remembered things moving much more slowly in the anime version of the story. But there’s nothing wrong with packing in a bunch of plot into a manga when it is done right! There’s plenty of court intrigue as it looks like someone is trying to poison Shurei. Ryuki shows that he’s really quite competent with subterfuge in his own right, as he manages to confiscate tainted items and give Shurei antidotes without anyone knowing about it. The point of the plot was Lord Advisor Sa trying to push Ryuki into finally acting like the Emperor everyone knows he can be. Ryuki decides to step out from the cloak of incompetence that he hid behind and take power in order to make sure that the ones he’s closest to remain protected.

One of the main reasons why I like this series so much is because Shurei is a particularly strong heroine. She’s portrayed as being extraordinarily nice but not in a cloying way. The scene that highlighted her personality occurs early in the volume, when she’s scolding Seiran for not taking adequate care of himself. She says “…just the way I always moan and complain to you when I’m upset…I want you to be able to tell me all your frustrations too.” She puts her head down on the table wondering how she’ll ever be able to repay the debts of gratitude she owes Seiran, and he tells her that her smiling face is “his greatest remedy.” As Shurei leaves the court and prepares to return to her normal life of studying and housework, I’m eagerly waiting to see the next phase of her adventures.

Stepping on Roses Volume 4 by Rinko Ueda

I love Tail of the Moon, but I’ve steered clear of Stepping on Roses because I thought this series about a poor heroine forced into a marriage of convenience with a rich businessman during the Meiji era seemed a bit too “Perils of Pauline” for me. If I hadn’t read Tail of the Moon I’d probably enjoy Stepping on Roses more because it does have a certain level of romance novel cheesiness that I usually enjoy. It suffers a bit in comparison though because Usagi and Hanzo are much more compelling characters than Sumi and Soichiro.

Sumi and Soichiro are in the type of marriage of convenience where it is clear that they both love each other but aren’t going to admit it for several volumes. Complications ensue when Natsuki introduces a maid named Keiko into the house as a spy. She’s underhanded and sneaky, trying to pry into Sumi’s hidden poor background. She attempts to sabotage Sumi and Soichiro’s relationship, but only the trusty butler Komai really knows what’s going on. I thought that Keiko was so unsneaky, it was hard to feel sorry for Sumi and Soichiro when things started to go wrong. I can’t get away from comparing this manga to Tail of the Moon. Ueda seems to specialize in sweet, ditzy heroines, but even though Usagi was frequently portrayed as incompetent, it was due to the fact that she didn’t fit in well to her ninja clan context. She was actually a skilled herbalist and only got into trouble when she attempted to act like a ninja. Also, with Hanzo’s position as being the head of a ninja plan, he had a good reason for acting gruff and strict most of the time. Sumi and Soichiro have very similar personalities when compared with Usagi and Hanzo, but I’m not finding the Meiji era setting as compelling. It is obvious that Ueda does a ton of research for her manga, so Stepping on Roses is really just suffering in comparison for being sort of ok, while Tail of the Moon was really great.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Natsume’s Book of Friends Volume 5 by Yuki Midorikawa

Midorikawa’s gentle book about yokai continues to combine arresting images with stories of redemption. Natsume visits a nearby hotel for a cram session with his friends, and discovers that the owner is haunted by an encounter with a mermaid many years ago. He manages to bring peace to the old woman and the mermaid, who manage to acknowledge the friendship began when the inn owner was a little girl. There were a few more scenes of Natsume interacting with normal people than I remember from previous volumes. One in particular stuck in my mind, when Natsume is walking along with his classmates and grows distracted because he’s the only one who can see an invisible giant walking through the village with his head stuck in the clouds. I was happy to see a good chunk of the volume devoted to Natsume helping a girl who can also see yokai when she draws spell circles. She’s been cursed, and she draws spell circles like graffiti all over the neighborhood in an attempt to locate the spirit who cursed her. Natsume is added to the curse when she utters his name, but he decides to help her with her problem. It was nice to see Natsume make another friend who might be able to understand what he’s going through. Another story provided the reader with more details about Natsume’s grandmother who spent all of her time imprisoning yokai with her “Book of Friends.” She’s grown up completely isolated, yet still decides to help Natsume’s uncle when he was a young boy. She enters his house and subdues the spirit saying “get out, this is the house where my favorite kid lives.” Natsume gains some understanding of his grandmother when he wonders if she was alone for so long that she forgot things, thinking “the proper term for that is my friend’s house.” Natsume’s Book of Friends seems remarkably consistent. The episodic nature of the way Natusume deals with the yokai ensures that it isn’t particularly surprising but there will usually be some interesting imagery or small episodes that illuminate human character, which makes for rewarding reading.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

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Manga Reviews

Demon Sacred Volume 3

Demon Sacred Volume 3 by Natsumi Itsuki

I absolutely love this series. The third volume wasn’t quite as crazy as the first two, but some good stuff happens. We get to see melancholy teen idol Keito’s reaction to meeting his demon doppleganger K2 and learn that Shinobu, hot young doctor and guardian to mystical teen twin girls has an Evil! Adoptive! European! Family! in his past. I feel somehow like this manga should come packaged with a musical microchip to play suitable dramatic music during these important plot revelations.

Nothing good can happen when a doppleganger takes the place of a teen idol in a photo shoot and manages to produce better pictures. Keito is amazed and disturbed when he sees photos of K2, and a little worried about his livelihood because the photographer is saying that he doesn’t need any other subjects for the rest of his life. Keito tracks down K2 at Mona and Rina’s house, and the teens begin to hash out this case of mistaken idol identity. Mona learns that Keito has been orphaned by return syndrome too. He sent his parents on a celebratory trip when he made it big, and they disappeared after encountering demons. Mona’s hesitant about telling Keito the truth about K2, but they end up forming an alliance after Mona explains about the increased numbers of demons, the possible government involvement, and her desire to cure Rina’s return syndrome. Itsuki continues to do a great job with characterization for two people that look the same but have totally different personalities. Keito is mature and a little bit withholding and glum, which is at odds with his job. K2 is a dangerous 5000 year old little kid with a severe case of puppy love. When Mona hugs him and tells him she’s glad to see him when he shows up just in time to fend off a demon attack, he’s delighted.

Shinobu has plenty of problems to deal with when he is abruptly called into work due to his malicious European adoptive siblings suddenly showing up to find out how he’s doing with the family business. It turns out that tortured scientist Shinobu is tortured because his evil blond brother Helmut abused him so badly as a young child, he lost his memory of the abuse. Now nothing is left but Shinobu’s severe repulsion whenever he has to look at Helmut’s angelic Aryan face. Shinobu has a few other evil European siblings but the one that seems like the most trouble next to Helmut is the bitchy Zophie, who quickly susses out the woman at work who has a crush on her Japanese brother, makes some horribly cutting comments, and figures out that Shinobu’s research interests are not what they seem. She really is amazingly efficient.

I put down this volume amazed at the sheer amount of plot Itzuki was able to cram into 200 pages. I didn’t even mention the way the group dealt with the pesky Griffin that’s been bothering them, and the hints about demon/human chain relations and the nature of K2’s power. Sometimes Demon Sacred has passages here and there that rely a little too much on exposition, but the world that Itsuki is building is so interesting, I don’t mind it at all. Demon Sacred‘s combination of cute guys, plucky in the face of tragedy teen girls, and wacky fantasy complete with conspiracy theories is so compelling. I can’t wait for the next volume.

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Manga Reviews

Shojo Beat Quick Takes – Butterflies and Boys

Butterflies, Flowers Volume 5 by Yuki Yoshihara

I tend to think of this series as “stealth josei” because while it is issues under the Shojo Beat imprint, the sexual content and mature readers rating puts it in the josei category for me. Yoshihara continues with her winning blend of workplace sex comedy and romance as Choko and her former servant/current boss/boyfriend Masayuki contemplate moving in together. His apartment is barren, so they go to a furniture store and try to pick out a few pieces. Even though Choko is now a working girl, she instinctively has upper-class tastes when it comes to furniture. Masayuki is crestfallen when the saleswoman doesn’t immediately treat them like a lovey dovey couple. Unfortunately when they are alone, Masayuki promptly becomes impotent because he’s unable to make the psychological switch to thinking of Choko as his girlfriend. Choko demands that he gets over his problem so they can have an ordinary relationship and refuses to respond when he calls her “milady”. Masayuki is unable to give up the master-servant relationship and decides to make love to her with the inexplicably otaku pronouncement “Even a Gundam is able to stand tall from willpower alone.” Butterflies, Flowers continues to be a little raunchy while simultaneously showing heart-warming stories about a developing relationship. It is a very unique combination that I think only Yoshihara could pull off.

Seiho Boys’ High School! Volume 4 by Kaneyoshi Izumi

This was a series I avoided when it came out for a couple reasons. I thought the premise of a shoujo series taking place in an all-boys high school had a very high potential for cheeziness. I also had read several volumes of Izumi’s other series Doubt! and gave up on it before finishing because I thought that the heroine was remarkably spineless. But I’d read several positive reviews of Seiho Boys’ High School! so I was curious to see if it really was good after all. The episodic nature of the manga and the handy character guide at the beginning made it easy for me to enjoy reading the manga even though I hadn’t read the previous volumes.

For an all-boys high school, there certainly seem to be plenty of girls hanging around. The romantic foibles of various characters are detailed in each chapter. Maki has a hard time moving forward with his current relationship due to his long-lost crush. Erika takes out her rage over his hesitation by mercilessly teaching him how to surf. The second story in the volume involves silent hunk Genda, who is utterly incapable of communicating his feeling to the girl that he’s dating, to the point of silently accepting without protest when she dumps him. When he sees her going out with a new totally unsuitable boy, he’s able to express himself with his fists and finally tell her how he feels. Izumi does a good job at showing Genda’s total and involuntary paralysis when it comes to talking to girls, which makes his breakthrough moment when he tells the object of his affections that she is “super cute” in a tiny voice. I liked the final story in the collection the most. Handsome Kamiki has a bit of a stalker in Fuyuka, who hangs around the school and is happy when he calls her by name. When Hanai confronts her, she says she realizes that she’s delusional but “My only choice is to embrace my delusions! I need to be a girl who lives in her dreams!” Hanai ends up serving as Henry Higgins to Fuyuka’s Eliza Doolittle, coaching her on how to change her personality to appeal more to boys. The interaction between Fuyuka was funny, with plenty of over-the-top pronouncements like “Master! I’ll work hard to perfect my womanly weapons!” Kamiki sees what’s going on and comments that he isn’t in favor of her sweetness and light act, and what if “people only like the plastic doll they’re seeing?” Fuyuka tries going out with a different guy and soon finds out that the strain of maintaining her new personality for someone she’s not even interested in isn’t worth it. I liked the short story format of this manga. I think Izumi’s character design and humor have improved a lot since Doubt!, and I enjoyed this volume much more than I was expecting.


Review copies provided by the publisher.

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Manga Reviews

Kamisama Kiss Volume 2

Kamisama Kiss Volume 2 by Julietta Suzuki

One of the things I liked about the first volume of this series was the way Nanami still continued to be a normal teenage girl even after achieving accidental godhood and taking up residence at a shrine. I liked the way Nanami journeyed back to the real world briefly, so I was happy to see that she makes the attempt to return to high school. What prompts her to return is a combination of boredom and a typical teen girl crush, when it is announced that the popular goth rock idol Kurama has just enrolled at her high school. He’s known as “a fallen angel with black wings” but he’s actually another yokai after Nanami’s power. Suzuki continues to have witty character designs for her yokai characters. Kurama is drawn almost as a parody of visual kei artists with heavy eyeliner, pointed fingernails, and black feathers floating in the air around him. While Tomoe sends Nanami to school wearing a goofy cat-head scarf in order to hide her mark of godhood, Kurama soon finds her out. He finds Nanami fascinating because after her initial meeting, she doesn’t immediately fawn over him like the other girls. She’s able to quickly perceive that Kurama has a stuck-up personality and her crush promptly fades. It seems like Kurama is going to stick around for awhile so it looks like Kamisama Kiss is going to be more conventionally shoujo than Karakuri Odette, with the normal girl being the crush object of two cute non-human guys.

Nanami’s high school classmates are almost uniformly obnoxious. The annoying boy from the first volume shows up again, and everyone makes fun of Nanami for being poor, until Tomoe makes a dramatic appearance to defend her. The other main storyline in this volume had many of the yokai of the week qualities of the first volume, but it ended up being in service of Nanami and Tomoe’s relationship developing further. A bright and powerful goddess with a shrine in the sky is dismayed to find out that Tomoe is in service to a human, so she announces that she’s taking over Nanami’s shrine, striking Tomoe with a cartoonish hammer to regress him into a child-like body. Nanami is soon placed in the role of Tomoe’s caretaker even though she’s lost her mystical powers. Nanami is determined to stick with Tomoe because she thinks he’s her only family. Seeing the power dynamic between Nanami completely reverse was interesting. Now Tomoe is helpless without his powers and unable to be intimidating because he looks like a three-year-old. He becomes dependent on Nanami to help him survive in the human world.

Overall, while Kamisama Kiss doesn’t quite have the quirky qualities I enjoy so much about Karakuri Odette, it is still a better than average shoujo series. There are fewer funny moments, but Kurama’s parodic goth appearance shows that Suzuki’s sense of humor is still intact.

Review copy provided by the publisher.