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Manga Reviews REVIEWS

Strobe Edge, Vols 5 and 6

One of the reasons why I keep reading manga is that it still has the capacity to surprise me. I found the fifth volume of Strobe Edge exciting to read, because it went in a totally different direction from what I was expecting. I’d always expected that the love triangle between Ren, Mayuka, and Ninako would have to be resolved somehow, but I wasn’t expecting a big change to come from Mayuka this early in the series. Ren is deliberately holding himself back from developing feelings for Ninako due to his sense of duty towards Mayuka. She’s emotional fragile and stressed out with the demands of her modeling career, school, and her parents’ divorce. Ren has a finely honed sense of integrity and wouldn’t do anything to hurt another person, with the expense of actually subverting his own feelings in the process.

I always expect anyone in a shoujo manga with a modeling career to be evil, but Mayuka shows that she’s been slowly picking up on Ren’s distance, coming to terms with her own goals for how she wants to live her life, and she realizes that she’s the one who is going to have to take a big step forward on her own. The change in Ren and Mayuka’s relationship isn’t without pain on both sides, but everything is handled with a degree of emotional maturity and sensitivity that is notable. It is fun to read a shoujo series that explores the shifting relationships between characters with such nuance.

In the meantime Ninako and Ando are in the grips of adorable teenage awkwardness, as she attempts to bury her own feelings for Ren and Ando tries to show her that he’s the better choice for her. Ando’s shifted from the cheerful flirtations personality that he displayed in the first few volumes to showing Ninako just how much he cares about her. There was a fun bonus story in this volume that delved into the past friendship between Ren and Ando, and just where it went wrong. This is the type of bonus story that I really enjoy, as it gives the reader a glimpse of the characters in a slightly different context, and provides more background as the manga moves forward.

There’s emotional turmoil ahead in the sixth volume of Strobe Edge, as Ando’s antagonism towards Ren resurfaces and Ren is dealing with the aftermath of his breakup with Mayuka. The burden of popularity and extreme handsomeness weighs heavily on Ren, as he is girlfriendless for barely a day before the girls at school start circling him. Ninako assumes that Ren is sad, and doesn’t want to do anything to add to his stress. Even with Valentine’s day coming up, she doesn’t want to add to the mountain of chocolate he’s going to be receiving from all the other girls.

There are some fun action scenes as Ren and Ando (mostly Ando) work through some aggression on the basketball court. The antagonistic relationship between them takes a turn towards the hilarious as Ando gets injured and when he wakes up and spots Ren he yells “You’re what I have to wake up to?” If Strobe Edge was only focused on the relationship between Ninako and Ren, it has the potential to get boring fairly fast. But seeing Ren and Ando start to work through their issues feels like an important emotional breakthrough. Ando instructs Ren not to smile, and Ren assumes that it is because his smile is somehow hideous, but really Ando doesn’t like the inadvertent effect a smiling Ren has on all the people in his vicinity. The end of volume six offers the promise of a new beginning at the start of a new school year, with Ren and Ninako being assigned to the same class.

Strobe Edge is a good example of why sometimes it is good to give a manga series a few volumes to develop before giving up on it. I was a bit on the fence about this series after reading only the first volume even though I generally enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have thought from just the first volume that Sakisaka would have built up the interesting relationships between the characters and handled some emotional journeys without relying on some of the standard shoujo plot elements. In some ways Strobe Edge is a less angsty successor to We Were There, as both series explore similar nuanced psychological territory.

Review copy of vol 6 provided by the publisher.

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Manga Reviews REVIEWS

Red River, Vols 1-7

When manga publishers first started their digital programs I was hoping for more backlist titles to become available, especially from Viz. I was particularly happy when Red River started coming out in a digital edition. I’ve long regretted not just buying this series when it was coming out, because I suspected I would really like it. At the time though I was buying a ton of other manga and I was leery of committing to a 28 volume shoujo series. I’ve been piecing together volumes of this series here and there, and I have a decent amount of both the first several books and a few concluding volumes, but nothing in the middle. I was glad I could switch back and forth between print volumes and my iPad to give the first part of this series a try. The arresting cover image of the first volume provides a nice overview of the series. A girl in modern clothing is being menaced by a bunch of people holding daggers, against a backdrop of a blue sky and stone buildings from another era.

The girl who is about to get stabbed on the cover of Red River is Yuri, a cheerful high school student who had just received her first kiss from her classmate Satoshi. Yuri goes to school and hangs out with her younger sisters, but a number of odd things seem to happen when she’s close to water. A glass bubbles over and hands reach out to her from a school fishtank. The incidents get worse and worse, to the point where Yuri is carried away in the middle of a date when she steps near a puddle. Yuri finds herself in a bathhouse in the capitol of the Hittite empire. Chased by armed men whose language she doesn’t understand, Yuri runs into a courtyard and encounters a handsome man who promptly sweeps her off her feet and kisses her. Prince Kail distracts the men and sends them on their way, claiming he knows nothing about a woman in strange clothing running through the city. Yuri can suddenly understand the language of the place she’s in, as princely kisses seem to serve as a universal translation device. Kail offers to swap Yuri in for the woman he was originally waiting for. Yuri concludes that he’s a jerk and runs off in the strange city yet again, only to be captured by Kail’s extremely evil stepmother.

Kail’s evil stepmother wants to use Yuri for a virgin sacrifice to work some strange magic to place her son as heir to the empire instead of Kail. Kail is an extremely quick thinker and prevents the sacrifice by showing up at the last minute to announce that due to his masterful powers of seduction, Yuri is no longer a virgin, and thus not suitable to be a sacrifice to anyone. Throwing her over his shoulder, Kail announces that he’s going to remove his “sullied baggage” from the room. Kail and Yuri start gradually falling in love, as he begins to appreciate her articulated moral sense and intelligence. Yuri soon realizes that Kail is doing the best he can in an extremely hostile court environment where his stepmother is doing whatever she can to plot his demise.

While there are a few references to magic here and there, Red River is much more of a historical adventure than it is a fantasy story. Yuri doesn’t really have magical powers, but she might as well have them due to the effect she has when Kail decides to announce that she’s the incarnation of the goddess Ishtar and uses her to inspire his troops as a gambit to protect her from his stepmother. While Kail gives Yuri the position of his concubine and they sleep in the same bed every night, she still remains a virgin, since he backs off when she mentions her boyfriend back home. The “will they or won’t they” tension that appears in the first few volumes is mainly due to Kail keeping his distance from Yuri because he knows he needs to send her back to his own time, and Yuri is determined not to care for Kail too much when she has to go back to her family.

While Yuri seems to have an unfortunate habit of getting kidnapped fairly often, she’s also extremely level-headed and pragmatic. Kail rescues her, but she also uses some quick thinking to rescue him a number of times. She throws herself into training when she’s given the role of Ishtar to play, determined not to embarrass herself and Kail. When she’s stolen away by a prince from a rival country, she spends her time improving the sickroom for prisoners of war that are deemed near death, and her introduction of modern sanitation helps the prisoners heal as well as providing herself with a slightly sick troop of soldiers inside the enemy walls.

Shinohara’s art has a bit of an old-school feel to it. This series was first published in 1995, so the character designs might look a tad old fashioned. But the many action scenes and the historical settings and costumes are handled with great clarity. Even when the paneling might focus more on the character’s emotions and interactions, there’s usually an architectural detail or background element that grounds the reader in the scene. Yuri believably shifts from tomboy to gorgeous depending on the situation and clothing she finds herself in, and Kail transforms from a slightly arrogant prince to a person who is much more kind and concerned.

I read these volumes over the weekend, and was very entertained! I think Red River is one of those series that benefits from being able to read many volumes at once, because the story lines are fast-paced and interesting, with plenty of cliff-hangers at the end of most volumes. While Red River is certainly a romance, it focuses much more on the expansion of the Hittite empire and the political machinations of the royal family. Yuri and Kail are a sympathetic couple, even if some of their issues would be solved if they were only able to sit down and have an honest conversation about their feelings. Fending off witchy evil stepmothers, dodging kidnappings, and dealing with bronze age military tactics do take up quite a bit of time. One thing I did miss in these volumes was author’s notes. I don’t know if there just weren’t any attached to this series, or if there was a decision made not to include them, but I would have found it interesting to hear about the author’s research. It seems like most of the historical shoujo manga that gets translated for English audiences tends to focus more on Japan as a setting, so Red River is certainly unique in that aspect. While there’s certainly enough romance to keep most shoujo fans happy, the setting and emphasis on action and adventure make this a very appealing series for readers.

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Kaze Hikaru, Vol. 21



Kaze Hikaru Volume 21 by Taeko Watanabe

Kaze Hikaru is one of those titles that makes me feel happier just because it exists. The new volumes come out very slowly now, so when one appears it is always a good excuse to celebrate! This volume was particularly rewarding for any long-time reader of the series, as Sei and Soji begin to acknowledge their feelings about each other although they remain very much constrained by Sei’s disguise as a male Shinsengumi recruit and the customs of the times.

In the aftermath of Sei’s mission, it is announced that she’s going to be reassigned to Saito’s troop. Soji decides to create more distance between him and his young protegee by telling her that he requested the transfer and abruptly ordering her to leave him alone, saying “I got sick of your chasing me around like a girl.” Sei assumes that Soji thinks her feelings are burdensome and decides to run away. She leaves, fortunately during her rest period so she won’t be executed for desertion. Soji is relaxing, assuming that he’s fixed everything but he’s alarmed when Saito informs him that he’s in love with Sei.

Sei travels to a nunnery where she’s taken refuge before, learning about village healing from the head nun Suigetsuni. Sei has decided to sever the ties to her old life and join a nunnery, because it is the only way to sever her ties with her previous life. Soji becomes more and more worried as he realizes that no one knows where Sei is, and with his position in the Shinsengumi he can do nothing but sit, wait, and be forced to execute her for desertion if she doesn’t come back. The parallel stories shifting back and forth between the couple were particularly effective in this volume, as Soji’s growing concern forces him to confront his own feelings about Sei, and Sei grapples with her thoughts about healing and death as she learns more about Suigetsuni’s life story.

Watanabe is a master at spinning out a story, as 21 volumes into Kaze Hikaru, I’m in no hurry to see it wrapped up. Even though so much of this manga revolves around the characters being unable to express their emotions to each other, it is easy to see just how much Sei and Soji have changed each other through their unconventional friendship. As always, the author notes manage to distill an incredible amount of research into a few pages focusing on an element from the historical setting of the manga. This volume focuses on clothing and her reasons for depicting the Shinsengumi a certain way. If you aren’t reading this manga yet, give it a try! This is such a thoughtful, well-executed historical series that really stands out as having much more substance than most shoujo manga.

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Sunny, Vol. 1 by Taiyo Matsumoto

It makes me feel good that there are still new series coming out from Viz in the Viz Signature imprint. Sunny by Taiyo Matsumoto is also an addition to the trend of nicely packaged manga hardcovers. With a slightly larger trim size (the same as the other IKKI titles) and color pages before most chapters, this is a volume that will delight manga collectors looking for something nicer than the average paperback. I’ve only read Blue Spring by Matsumoto before, I really need to get around to reading Tekkon Kinkreet.

Sunny is written in one of my favorite fiction formats – a collection of interrelated short stores with shifting main characters that are all tied together. The Sunny of the title of the book refers to a broken down old Nissan Sunny car that sits in the back of a group home for abandoned children. The Sunny is a secret hideout, place to stash porn and other illicit materials, and a means of escape for a group of kids that doesn’t have much security or fun in their daily lives. The volume opens with a brief glimpse of foster home chaos, quickly inter cut with a scene showing the imagination of Haruo, who sits in the car imagining that he’s bleeding out in the desert like a tragic movie tough guy. Haruo’s reverie is abruptly interrupted by Junsuke, an overly hyper snotty-nosed kid who eagerly announces that there’s a new arrival in the house. The readers of Sunny and the new kid Sei both get an abrupt introduction to the children’s home as Sei goes through the house and sits in the Sunny with Haruo and Junsuke. When Sei says that his mom is going to pick him up before summer Haruo says, “No way you’re goin home. You got dumped.”

Sunny captures Haruo’s frustration and anger about his own situation, combined with his helplessness about being able to change anything. Junsuke struggles with his instinct to grab anything shiny, even stealing from his classmates at times. While Haruo is a central viewpoint character, Sunny fluidly moves among different points of view, showing Megumu’s concern for a dead cat and the real-world concerns of older kid Kenji. While there’s a lot of hopelessness in the lives of the kids who live at the home, they also stick up for each other and come together when one of them goes missing.

Matsumoto has a scratchy pen and ink style in his drawings, which incorporate cartoonish elements like circles for rosy cheeks. Washes of ink in varying intensity and hand-drawn textures instead of screentones give Sunny a hand-crafted feel that stands out among more corporate glossy manga. Matsumoto’s detailed backgrounds firmly establish the neighborhood the kids live in, as well as the run-down environment of their house. Overall, Sunny is exactly what I’d expect from the Viz Signature line – a nuanced work that is set apart from more commercial manga due to its artistic and literary value .

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Demon Love Spell, Vol. 3

Demon Love Spell Volume 3 by Mayu Shinjo

It is nice being able to read a Mayu Shinjo series that I can wholeheartedly enjoy. There are so many overly serious paranormal romance stories out there, it is still refreshing to visit Demon Love Spell for a bit of a comedic spin on the genre. Bumbling shrine maiden Miko and overly alpha male incubus Kagura are just goofy enough to be funny but not ridiculous, and their relationship has enough character-based humor that it is easy to root for them as a couple.

This volume opens with the overly theatrical banishing of a demon by Sou Yamabuki, a former pupil of Miko’s father. Kagura in chibi-form gets jealous that Miko is crushing on Yamabuki on TV, but she assures him that she thinks he’s the coolest. At school the next day Miko gets a bunch of attention from other guys and excitedly assumes that she’s now popular with boys. Miko and Kagura go on an actual date with some great moments where Miko blackmails Kagura into ignominious activities like eating hamburgers by threatening to shrink him again. The ending of the date is interrupted by Sou, who promptly banishes the source of Miko’s new found charms – a weak succubus demon. With Sou, Shinjo explores the old standby “sudden fiance” as he decides that he needs to marry Miko in order to take her away from Kaguya. Sou also reveals that while Miko’s ability to apply her power might not be the best yet, she’s actually extremely gifted. Sou’s desires seem to center more on gaining demon fighting power than truly caring for Miko. Kaguya decides upon an extremely unorthodox method to fend off his rival, but it does show how much he actually cares for the priestess. The next main story in the volume focuses on the sudden appearance of a handsome snow demon who spends some time protecting Miko when Kaguya storms off in a huff.

I still sort of wish that some of Shinjo’s other, earlier series would be translated over here. Sensual Phrase has most other English-translated shoujo beat for unadulterated melodrama. But Demon Love Spell is a nice substitute. It has the humor of Ai Ore without going too far out into left field, and the relationship between Miko and Kaguya is nicely balanced due to the power imbalance inherit in him spending a good portion of each day as mini-figure clipped to her handbag. This was a satisfying volume of this series, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens with Miko’s newly revealed power in future volumes.