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Manga Reviews REVIEWS

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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7 Billion Needles, Vol. 1

7 Billion Needles, Vol. 1 by Nobuaki Tadano

I was happy when I saw that Vertical was releasing some of their titles for the Kindle, but I already had print copies of the main series I was following like Twin Spica. I remember hearing interesting things about 7 Billion Needles, so I decided to give the first volume a try. Hikaru is a typical teenager, spending most of her time shutting out the world by keeping her headphones on. She’s a teenager with something other than angst churning inside her though. On a school trip she had an encounter with an extraterrestrial object that vaporized her body, leading to an alien intelligence named Ciel who reconstructed her body and establishes a symbiotic relationship with her.

Tadano does a good job establishing a slightly unsettling slice of life tone for this manga. Hikaru goes through her life someone aimlessly, and gradually more and more strange events begin to occur around her. Ciel makes contact and tells his host that he’s hunting an even worse threat – an entity called Maelstrom that might also be inhabiting a human. The title 7 Billion Needles refers to the needle in a haystack like task of hunting down an evil alien intelligence hiding somewhere in the human population. The manga is based on the Hal Clement novel Needle, and Tadano does manage to strike a good balance between the thought experiment vibe of classic science fiction and manga action as Hikaru and Ciel strike an uneasy truce and start hunting together.

The reading experience on my Kindle Paperwhite was just fine. I was intrigued by the first volume, and this is the type of digital series I can easily see myself stocking up on when I’m about to go on a trip and can’t haul around a bunch of physical copies of manga with me.

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Manga Reviews REVIEWS

Cross Game, Vols 7 and 8

Cross Game is one of those series that was so great, I’m a bit angry at myself for taking so long to finish it. The seventh omnibus volume was a bit of a surprise, because something that I expected to happen didn’t, and it didn’t happen in a way that was really interesting with the story that Adachi was building. All along I thought that there’d be a major confrontation between Ko’s team and the antagonistic coach at Kurokoma. But Kurokoma doesn’t even bother to scout their first-round competition because they’ve never heard of the team. Daimon’s arrogance is on full display as he talks to Junpei who is on his way to scout Seishu’s first-round opponent. Daimon says of his competition that he doesn’t even know what they are called, they’re “some no-name school…a team I have no intention of remembering…” The no-name team ends up being Seishu’s next opponent, as Kurokoma is defeated in the first round. Daimon’s comeuppance didn’t come at the hands of Seishu, it came from his own internal failings. In most other shonen manga there’s be a more simplistic confrontation between the two teams during the tournament, but thankfully Adachi doesn’t write his manga in an expected way.

Junpei has proposed to the oldest Tsukishima daughter Ichiyo, and she’s answered that she’ll marry him if Seishu gets to Koshien, adding an extra element of romantic tension to every baseball game. Ko’s finally reached a point where he can’t rely on Aoba for advice. His athletic abilities keep growing and as he tries to adjust his form after throwing the ball faster than he has before, Aoba can’t help him because she’s never thrown a ball that fast. Akane is hospitalized, and the idea of losing her combined with her similarity to Wakaba, makes the summer seem a bit eerie. Ko seems largely unflappable through the whole situation and Aoba comments to Yuhei that he seems cold. Yuhei comments that Ko knows “some things you just gotta do. Other things, you can only have faith…”

One of the things I love is the way simple scenes end up saying so much about the relationships between the characters. Aoba and Ko are riding an empty train together and she makes a point of sitting as far away from him as possible. Ko comments that the distance between them never changes and when she sharply asks if he said anything, he just replies “Nope.”

As the series comes to a close, I was reminded all over again how for a manga the focuses so intensely on baseball, it isn’t really about baseball at all in terms of the motivations and actions of the characters. Ko’s calm and constant training is touched off by the idea that Aoba’s will only like a boy who can pitch a 100 mph fastball. As All of Ko’s training begins to pay off with some inspired pitching as his team becomes a contender for Koshien, his pitches start clocking at higher and higher speeds. As Aoba watches Ko she thinks that he used to be like her, overly emotional and with a quick temper, but now “he’s just like Wakaba.”

During the final game there’s parallel baseball action and emotional revelation happening, as the reader sees the depth of Aoba’s hatred for Ko, and how that hatred is a proxy for dealing with Wakaba’s death, and how stoic and emotionally mature Ko is to just let himself be the object of Aoba’s scorn. During a pivotal moment Ko has to bat, and he hands the umpire a token, putting himself firmly back in the mental space of all of the times he’s practiced his batting at the Tsukishima’s batting cage. Adachi introduces these moments in such an off-hand naturalistic way that the symbolism involved never seems forced or overly precious. As the series concluded I realized that more than just showing the dramatic struggles of a high-school baseball team, Cross Game is really a classic romance manga, with some closing moments that would put most shoujo manga to shame just in terms of the emotional depth portrayed. Ko and Aoba are one of my favorite manga couples, and Cross Game really is a work to be treasured.

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Weekly Astro Boy Magazine Vol. 1

Weekly Astro Boy Magazine Vol. 1

I was intrigued when Emanga.com announced that they would be releasing an Astro Boy magazine. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for manga magazines at this point, with the demise of print anthologies. I’ve read some Tezuka, but I’m definitely not familiar with all of his works. The magazine format for Tezuka works very well, because his art and storytelling style varies so much with the titles presented in the magazine, it is interesting to compare and contrast the differences between his different titles in this format.

I haven’t read much Astro Boy before, but the storyline for inclusion in the first issue of this manga magazine is a strong one, as it is “The Greatest Robot on Earth,” where the robot Pluto created to battle all the other great robots that exist, until he is hailed as the supreme robot. This storyline is what Naoki Urasawa used for his manga series Pluto. Astro Boy tangles with Pluto for a little bit, but his creator calls him off. Astro Boy responds to the existence of the new robot by requesting an upgrade of his own power. Astro Boy really displays the virtue of simplicity. The robot designs are so distinct, and the action in Astro Boy is so clear and easy to follow, it makes me think that some of the detail and opaque action in modern manga has really missed the mark.

Phoenix is the next title featured in this magazine, and this is a real treat because I believe some of the print volumes released by Viz are now out of print. The story comes from the fourth volume of Phoenix, called Karma. It is easy to see why Phoenix is often called Tezuka’s masterwork. This chapter featured the story of a boy who was injured just after being born, becoming a monster due to the harsh treatment from his fellow villagers. He encounters a sculptor in the woods and damages one of his arms. The sculptor finds refuge in a temple and begins to reach a different stage of consciousness as he attempts to take up art again. Reading Phoenix itself is a bit of a philosophical experience, as the characters encounter each other in this fable-like story, with stylized depictions of nature inter cut with both action and personal reflection.

The rest of the book is rounded out by shorter chapters for Dororo and Black Jack. It was a bit difficult for me to get a handle on Dororo just due to the small page count. Black Jack, I automatically read with feelings of affection, because the two-fisted surgeon is one of my favorite Tezuka characters. Overall, I really enjoyed the opportunity to read different Tezuka works back to back. It is a bit different than diving into a full volume of manga, but it really gives the reader an appreciation for the variations in art and theme that is expressed in Tezuka’s manga. This is definitely worth checking out if you don’t have an extensive Astro Boy collection and especially if you want an accessible way of reading Phoenix.

Electronic access provided by the publisher

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Knights of Sidonia, Vol. 2

Knights of Sidonia, Volume 2 by Tsutomu Nihei

As I was reading the second volume of Knights of Sidonia, it occurred to me that Nihei ably manages a narrative balancing act of giving the reader just a little bit more information in each volume, but not so much that everything feels completely filled in. My curiosity about the history of Sidonia was fulfilled with a bit of backstory about why the massive ship seems to be moving through space alone, isolated except for occasional attacks by the Guana. I’m still intrigued to learn more about Nagate Tanikaze and why he happens to be so good (in a somewhat bumbling way) at piloting the Tsugumori. He also seems to be continually singled out by those in command.

I enjoy the general sense of scale expressed with the illustrations of interior of the giant spaceship – it does really seem massive. The human cost that occurs when it has to maneuver itself suddenly makes it clear that even safely inside a spaceship death can come at any instant. Reading this manga, I get the sense that Nihei plans out all the details of his worlds very meticulously. One negative thing is that generally the characters in this manga suffer a bit from samefaceitius, making it sometimes difficult to sort out who is who absent any extreme differences in hairstyle. However, this is a minor quibble next to the general awesomeness of seeing the Guarde units fly through space in their ringed locked arm formation.

This is not a happy manga about giant space robots fighting aliens. The evolutionary capabilities of the Guana give some scenes a horror comic vibe, and bad things certainly happen to good people. But there’s enough humor in the strained interpersonal interactions of the people aboard the Sidonia that when finishing up a volume of this manga, I’m not feeling oppressed by tragedy but very interested to see what happens next.

Also, for those of you reading this manga solely for talking bear appearances, there is some talking bear in this volume!