Kekkaishi Volumes 8 and 9

October 26, 2010 by Leave a Comment

One of this week’s spooky manga picks is the always excellent shonen monster hunting series Kekkaishi. It is daunting sometimes to try to catch up on a long running series like Kekkaishi, but Tanabe’s excellent pacing and character development make it possible to keep following the story even if you have skipped a few volumes. I’ve read the first five volumes of the series previously.

Kekkaishi Volume 8 by Yellow Tanabe

Things are growing more complicated for monster hunters Yoshimori and girl next door Tokine. Performing their duties as protectors of the mystical energy site located by their school used to be fairly straightforward, but now they’re dealing with an organized effort from a group of ayakashi (monsters) who even have the ability to take on human form. They’ve been sent an ally named Gen from the Shadow Organization, where Yoshimori’s brother has now risen to a position of power. Gen has been taken out of the fight and Yoshimori and Tokine have to fend off a large group of monsters by themselves. Yoshomori’s latent power briefly manifests when Tokine is frightened, and the leader of the monster pack inexplicably calls off the attack, perhaps content in finding out something about Yoshimori’s power levels that young kekkaishi doesn’t even know himself. The remainder of the volume shows some of Gen’s backstory as he struggles with the idea of continuing his assignment to help Yoshimori and Tokine. Gen is half ayakashi, and has the potential to turn entirely into a monster if he isn’t careful with restraining his power. Yoshimori’s older brother Masamori placed him with a special class within the shadow organization called the Night Troops, which is made up of other children similar to Gen. Masamori also seems to be playing politics within the Shadow Organization, so it is easy to see why Yoshimori might be suspicious of him.

It seemed to me like there was a tiny bit of character progression in the way Yoshimori was drawn. I thought he looked a little bit more angular in the face, perhaps showing him as becoming more mature as a person and in the use of his power since the series started. Tanabe’s monster designs are always a highlight of the book, with Yoshimori’s foes looking like demonic versions of a squid, Cousin It, a mutated bat, and an odd insect.

Kekkaishi Volume 9 by Yellow Tanabe

The ninth volume is devoted to some fun training sessions for Yoshimori, Gen, and Tokine when Gen’s monster trainer Atora shows up suddenly to put them through their paces. She challenges them to capture her, and they’re forced to work together as a team. Tokine and Yoshimori already have a rapport, but Gen just tends to rush off into battle and doesn’t coordinate his actions with others. Due to some traumatic events when his power manifested Gen tends to hold himself apart from others. Atora was a fun character, who was always drawn with a sunny grin on her face. She announces her presence by blasting the door in and seems absolutely delighted at the opportunity to stage a mock battle. More importantly, she wants to check up on her pupil to see if he’s finally making friends. She’s accompanied by a giant bear named Raizo who is extremely cute even as he starts emitting dangerous electricity.

While the new three person team of kekkaishi begins to work together, the organized group of akakashi start acting up in mysterious ways. One of them drinks up the mystic swamp where the spirit Lord Uru lives, and Yoshimori is concerned about the fate of the nature god. This volume contained some of Tanabe’s great arresting images. Yoshimori’s grandfather thinks one of his old friends might be in danger of an attack, and a representative of the Shadow Organization breaths a giant smoky scorpion into existence in order to provide transportation. Gen and Yoshimori bond over lunch as they float on a cube of energy far above their high school.

I think it says a lot about Tanabe’s skills as an author that a manga that juggles complex plots and a variety of characters is still easy to follow even if there are gaps in the volumes that you’ve read. One of these days I’ll be totally caught up! In a world filled with formulaic shonen, Kekkaishi really is something special.

Dengeki Daisy Volumes 1 and 2

October 25, 2010 by 1 Comment

Dengeki Daisy Volumes 1 and 2 Kyousuke Motomi

Just what I need, yet another shoujo series to follow! I didn’t run out and preorder the first volume of Dengeki Daisy when I saw it solicited. I tend to enjoy most Shojo Beat series, but I thought the idea of a girl getting over her brother’s death due to her guardian angel “Daisy” who is reachable only by cell phone was maybe not the greatest premise for a story. Then I saw all the positive reviews for the series from other manga bloggers and I started to think I was missing out. When Viz sent me a copy of the second volume, I decided to give in and try the series, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Volume 1

Dengeki Daisy starts out with a rather worn out premise, but the execution of all the details made the story seem fresh. Teru’s older brother has died, but before he passed on he gave her a cell phone and said that the phone will connect her to a person named Daisy who will always be there to support her. As the volume opens poor but sassy Teru is treating the phone like a false diary, telling Daisy that she’s doing fine when she’s being bullied by the sadistic student council at her school. Teru isn’t a helpless heroine. After she gets splashed with a bucket of water she turns a hose on the perpetrators. She’s aided further as some balls thrown by a mysterious rescuer connect with the heads of her tormentors. Teru tries to throw the balls back in the direction where she thinks they came from, but they end up breaking a window at the school. Enter the creepy yet astoundingly young and handsome school custodian Kurosaki. Since Teru is too poor to pay to fix the window, he announces that she’ll become his servant and puts her to work performing custodial tasks while he communes with his laptop. They quickly fall into the habit of bickering, as Kurosaki gruffly orders Teru around and she bids him farewell by saying “I hope your hair falls out by tomorrow!” Kurosaki always seems to be around when Teru needs help. When Teru needs help hacking into a computer in order to aid a classmate, she texts Daisy and the situation is quickly resolved. She asks Kurosaki if he’s Daisy and he denies it.

That scene was where I thought there was an indication that Dengeki Daisy might be a little more interesting than the average shoujo manga. I think in a more conventional title, it would take at least a volume or two for Teru to register the suspicion that Kurosaki is Daisy. Bad boys who are secretly good are shoujo staples but Kurosaki is a superior example of the type. I found myself captivated by his expressions of unholy glee as he dealt with the people who were picking on Teru. He was gruff and surly with Teru, and only had a gentle expression on his face when she couldn’t see him. Thankfully the evil student council plot is left quickly behind and the odd couple end up having to unravel something more interesting – industrial espionage. Teru’s older brother was a genius engineer, and unscrupulous people suspect that since Teru’s only inheritance from him was a cell phone it might be more valuable than it appears. While Kurosaki isn’t revealing his identity as Daisy to Teru, he used to work with her brother and took the custodian job to watch over her. He’s filled with guilt about the death of his friend.

Motomi’s art easily shifts between different modes that expresses what the characters are going through. When Teru and a couple of her friends express solidarity, they strike a fighting pose straight out of comedic shonen manga and vow “Even if we are poor and are clothes are shabby! Even if we are ugly and girls don’t like us! Our hearts bloom like flowers, beautiful and strong! And we’re proud of it!!!” Kurosaki looks like a capable action hero when he leaps to defend his girl and when they share a quiet moment in the school’s garden the backdrop of flowers and significant glances creates an emotionally charged mood broken only by Kurosaki telling Teru that she’s stupid for thinking he’s Daisy.

Volume 2

Teru and Kurosaki become temporary roommates after somebody breaks into her apartment. He puts her to work doing various domestic tasks like cooking, organizing CDs, and providing him with shoulder massages. One of the things I like is the emotional give-and-take between the couple. Kurosaki attempts to tease her after she announces that to her Daisy is the best thing in the world by asking her what would happen if Daisy turns out to be a total jerk like him. She says “That goes without saying, I’ll love everything about you,” then wacks him in the head. Kurosaki is momentarily dumbfounded and as Teru walks away she thinks “Even if you aren’t Daisy, I’ve already fallen for you.”

The supporting cast is rounded out by the addition of the new school counselor Riko. She is also someone who used to work with Kurosaki and Teru’s brother. Riko’s also interested in looking after Teru and when Teru seeks her advice she tells Teru that Kurosaki is a terrible, selfish person. Teru thinks that it is true that Kurosaki might be terrible because she has no idea what he’s thinking, so she vows to become “a terrible woman whose thoughts are unreadable” so she can play with his emotions. Teru and Daisy’s texts to each other provide an interesting counterpoint to the relationship between Teru and Kurosaki. He has more knowledge of her inner feelings, and Teru will sometimes confess something to Daisy and put on an entirely different facade for Kurosaki. Teru’s troubles continue as she continues to be the target of people who are after her brother’s research. The emotional strain of protecting Teru and holding back his feelings for her begins to weigh more heavily on Kurosaki, and the reader sees a flashback to a scene between him and Teru’s brother that seems a little creepy.

One thing that I thought was curious about this manga was the author bios in the back of the books. I’d thought that Kyousuke Motomi was one of the few men working as a shoujo manga artist, but the author bios indicated the author was female. On the other hand, the self-portrait of the author looked like it had a very stylized mustache, and there’s an a author comment about facial hair growth. So I’m not sure what to think, but I’d honestly be curious to read more shoujo written by men just as I enjoy shonen manga written by women.

Even though some of the plot points in Dengeki Daisy manga aren’t very unique, by the end of these two volumes I was totally invested in wanting to see what happens to Teru and Kurosaki. The industrial sabotage subplot and the events surrounding the death of Teru’s brother creates an ongoing mystery that works as a counterweight to the budding romance. Also, I find the idea of a romance between a high school girl and a seemingly benign yet emotionally traumatized hacker who is posing as a school custodian just creepy enough to be entertaining while not quite entering into the “No, this is yucky” territory of a manga like Black Bird. Teru seems to be extremely resilient and is able to cope with Kurosaki by coming up with quick put-downs whenever he seems mean. Dengeki Daisy manages to blend different emotional aspects to come up with a compelling story. I enjoyed reading this series because there’s suspense, romance, action, and just enough comedy to keep things from being too heavy.

Review copy of volume 2 provided by the publisher

Story of Saiunkoku Volume 1

October 17, 2010 by 6 Comments

Story of Saiunkoku Volume 1 by Sai Yukino and Kairi Yura

I’ve been looking forward to reading this manga series. Story of Saiunkoku is a light novel series in Japan which has spinoffs like an anime version and this manga version. I’ve watched a few episodes of the first season of the anime and enjoyed it very much, but I think that the manga stands on its own. You don’t need to be familiar with the anime to enjoy the manga, you’d just need to have an appreciation for strong female heroines and Chinese-like fantasy world settings, and who doesn’t like those things?

Shurei Hong is a young noblewoman whose family has fallen on hard times. Her mother is dead and she lives in a dilapidated mansion. Her father’s salary as court archivist doesn’t provide enough money to fix up the house or even afford a daily ration of rice. Shurei spends her time teaching the village children. Her ambition when she was young was to become a civil servant, and her father encouraged her in her studies even though as a woman she wouldn’t be permitted to take the exam. Shurei is helped by Seiran, who came to the house originally a a servant but functions like an adopted older brother. Shurei’s life changes when an adviser to the court comes to her with a proposition: Shurei will enter the court as the royal consort and try to push the emperor Ruyki into stepping up and leading his country. Ryuki appears on the surface to be a dissolute noble but it soon becomes clear that he has reasons for acting the way he does. He grew up as the youngest son in an abusive household, and his indifference functions like a kind of armor. Shurei has seen the way the people of the country suffer, and she won’t stand for an emperor who will do nothing to help them.

One of my favorite things about Story of Saiunkoku was Shurei. Having a heroine in manga who places such a high value on education is rare, and she genuinely cares about her students and the people who don’t have all the advantages of nobility. She’s not stuck-up, and is quite capable of indulging in a bit of whining to Seiran about being forced to eat barley instead of the glorious rice that she craves, but she soon stops feeling sorry for herself and focuses on other people. Her main motivation for entering the court is the fee that she’s promised if she manages to prod Ryuki into action. When she gets there she’s astounded by the amount of waste as the nobles surround themselves with expensive trinkets while the common people go hungry.

If Ryuki was just sulking because he’s a poor little rich boy, he wouldn’t be an appealing character. But Shurei’s arrival causes him to start opening up to other people. He notices that Shurei’s hands don’t look like they belong to a noble lady, and she explains about how hard she’s had to work to build a home for her father and Seiran. He shifts from being closed off to expressing enthusiasm when Shurei gives him a present because no one had ever given him anything before. Seiran thinks that he’s “An emperor as pure as a blank page…He seems almost unnaturally untainted and has no affectations. I’m sure he’ll be able to change himself immensely from here on.” The first volume of the manga was mostly concerned with Shurei and Ryuki getting to know each other, but I’m hoping that more attention gets paid to the supporting cast in future volumes. Seiran is a self-contained martial artist of great skill who just happens to share a name with Ryuki’s exiled older brother. Ryuki is helped by the advisers Koyu and Shuei, and the archives that Seiran’s father runs serve as a convenient place to escape all the court intrigue that surrounds the emperor.

Yura does a good job portraying the Chinese-influenced setting of Saiunkoku. The streets and wagons of the world outside the palace contrast with the overly manicured gardens of the court. One thing I liked about the adaptation of this manga is the way Ryuki’s overly formal speech is presented in contrast with the more natural way that everyone else talks. It serves as a reminder of the way he’s held apart from everybody else by his status. Ryuki asks Shurei to call him by name by saying “It’s unfair that only we don’t get to be called by name. Our name is so neglected – don’t you feel sorry for it?” Story of Saiunkoku has plenty of humor to contrast with the more touching moments portrayed in the manga. Seiran hugs Shurei when she breaks down thinking about the way she’s teaching students to become good civil servants instead of taking the exam herself, saying “My Lady, you’ve really worked hard, haven’t you?” The directionally-impaired scholar Koyu is only able to meet the emperor and start tutoring him after Shurei intervenes, and he yells “From here on I shall no longer hold back. Please do prepare yourself” while throwing down stacks of books.

I think this series will appeal to anyone who enjoys fantasy shoujo. The heroine surrounded by a group of handsome men might appeal to fans of Fushigi Yugi. The emphasis on geopolitics and learning to rule a country would also appeal to anyone who’s read the novels or seen the anime Twelve Kingdoms. I’m happy to find a new fantasy shoujo series to follow just when some of my current favorites might be ending in the next year.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Online Manga

October 15, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Note: this piece originally appeared on The Bureau Chiefs as part of my Anna Reads Manga feature.

Online manga can be a little difficult to track down if you are trying to avoid the many sites that exist to host scanlations (fan translations), or in the most egregious cases, hosting scans of the American manga editions. Fortunately in recent months more American publishers are putting manga online for free sampling or to make it easy to subscribe for electronic access. I’ll give an overview of some of the places you can go to read manga online legally.

FREE ONLINE MANGA

Viz Media caused a stir when it started serializing manga chapters on its sites Shonen Sunday and Sigikki. This is the place to go if you are looking for quirky seinen manga, as the parent Japanese magazine Ikki tends to specialize in the obscure. There’s a wide variety of stories and art styles on display. Chapters gradually rotate off the site as the print volumes are published.

Here are capsule reviews of my three favorite Sigikki series:

Afterschool Charisma – This series takes place in a school filled with clones of famous people from history. Napolean seems to be in the middle of a growth spurt, Mozart is an arrogant jerk, Marie Curie wants to play the piano instead of studying radium, and Freud is a creepy teen with a pageboy haircut. The ordinary boy Shiro Kamiya, whose father is in charge of the school and the cloning project, attends school along with the clones. Shiro innocently asks his father to help Marie with her musical ambitions, but what happens to her is not what Shiro intended. Will Shiro find out the truth behind the school? The art in Afterschool Charisma looked the most shoujoish to me out of all the Siggiki series. Sometimes it was difficult to tell apart the female characters, but the male characters were a bit more individual and had more personality. Teen-clone-Freud is hilarious.

House of Five Leaves – Masanosuke is a poor masterless samurai with a personality defect: He falls apart when he attracts attention. Thus he does a poor job of acting intimidating and keeps getting fired from his bodyguard jobs. Yaichi hires him for a day’ work. Masanosuke is struck by Yaichi’s confident air. But it turns out that Yaichi is a member of the criminal group the House of Five Leaves. Will Masanosuke continue to work for kidnappers in the hopes that Yaichi’s calm demeanor will wear off on him? I enjoyed the art of this series, as Ono has a loose and fluid style of drawing which serves to highlight Masanosuke’s defeated body language and his eyes, which look hollow eyes of someone who isn’t eating very well. Most samurai stories feature a main character who is more of a traditional bad-ass type, so I thought this twist on the genre was interesting.

Children of the Sea – Children of the Sea is as beautiful, deep, and mysterious as the ocean that the characters inhabit. Ruka is a young girl who gets in trouble at school for violently retaliating against a teammate at sports practice. She decides not to go home and goes on a quest to see the ocean. She travels to Tokyo at night and reaches an ocean view. A mysterious boy makes the pronouncement “The sea in Tokyo is kinda like a broken toy” and leaps over her into the sea. Ruka runs down to rescue him. Umi was raised in the ocean along with another boy named Sora by dugongs. They maintain their connection to the sea, and their skin becomes unbearably dry if they aren’t submerged in water very long.

Mysterious ocean animal disappearances have started to plague scientists. Animals seem to become spotted with light before they vanish like ghosts. Ruka’s father works in an aquarium where Umi often hangs out. As Ruka tries to escape her troubles in school she spends more and more time in the aquarium, meeting Umi and Sora’s foster father Jim. He’s a foreigner with mystical tattoos who loves to surf. Sora is sickly and spends a lot of time in the hospital. He’s suspicious of Ruka even though Umi says that she “smells like them.” Ruka sees Umi and Sora occasionally glowing with the unearthly light that the ocean ghosts emit. Are they going to be the next to disappear?

Shonen Sunday is a companion online manga site aimed at the younger set. Viz uses it to serialize new series like Rumiko Takahashi’s Rin-Ne and Yuu Watase’s Arata, but it also serves as a way to sample some of Viz’s lesser known backlist titles like the excellent monster hunting series Kekkaishi.

Kekkaishi – The hero of the story is Yoshimori. He’s young and weak and struggles with his training to become the successor to his family’s long-standing demon hunting tradition. His secret friend is the older girl next door Tokine, who belongs to a rival demon-hunting clan. Both Yoshimori and Tokine are aided in their demon hunts by demon dog sidekicks, who provide comic relief and guidance. Yoshimori isn’t very savvy about hunting demons. Tokine saves him and is injured in the process.

The story picks up again when Yoshimori is 14 and Tokine is 16. She criticizes his lack of refinement when demon hunting and counsels him to save his power. He doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt in front of him anymore and is determined to become a better fighter. Their school is conveniently located above a reservoir of power and at night they pursue the hunt. The manga blends action and humor as Yoshimori tries to fulfill his cherished ambition of making the perfect cake and dodges his grandfather’s training attempts. There are darker forces at work behind the sacred site that Yoshimori is sworn to protect. The story lines and character development are more complex than a typical fighting manga, which makes for a rewarding reading experience for those who like manga with a little bit of monster fighting and slapstick comedy.

Other major manga publishers like Tokyopop and CMX do tend to put up sample chapters of their manga, but I think Viz’s decision to set up separate online magazine sites with highlighted content gives their content greater prominence. I wish that in addition to the shonen and seinen sites Viz would put up an online magazine where readers could sample shoujo manga, especially after the demise of Shojo Beat magazine. Shonen Jump will soon be the only manga anthology magazine on the newsstands in the US. Yen Plus recently announced plans to discontinue their print magazine in favor of going digital instead. I think the next few years will hopefully give publishers a chance to experiment with digital manga magazines.

PAYING FOR MANGA ONLINE

This is an area where some of the smaller, more experimental publishers have more developed sites.

eManga

This is the online publishing arm of Digital Manga Publishing, which is probably best known for their yaoi titles, although back in the day they put out editions of some wonderfully weird stuff like Bambi and Her Pink Gun and Project X – Nissin Cup Noodle, a manga about the invention of noodles in a cup. While a casual reader might expect the titles on eManga to be only yaoi, there’s actually more variety there, with plenty of manga adaptations of harlequin romances and the shoujo classic Itazura Na Kiss. Reading manga there operates on a points system, where $10 will get you 1000 points, and online access to selected volumes may be priced anywhere between 200-400 points. If you follow digitalmanga on twitter, they’ll often give away free online access to selected volumes.

Netcomics

Netcomics is mainly a specialty publisher of Korean comics, or manhwa. They’ve used their online platform to publish American manga style comics and Japanese manga as well. Paying for manga on this site works on a chapter by chapter basis, with each chapter costing 25 cents. Single chapters from most titles are available for preview as well. Titles are sorted by genre, so it is easy to find series that might fit your mood, if you are looking for romance, comedy, or science fiction manhwa. Some of Netcomics’ titles that had print editions for the first few volumes have the later volumes only available online. I hate it when series are dropped, so while someone wanting to collect print copies of an entire series might be disappointed, it does seem like a good way of making slow-selling titles available to readers.

I can’t say that we’ve reached a level of mature development with the legal manga that’s available for readers. It would be nice if other publishers also followed Viz’s Sigikki model. But at least a handful of sites is available for fans who want to do the right thing and avoid scanlations. Hopefully the next few years will have more manga publishers experimenting with their online presence.

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