Review: GOLDEN CAIN

The history of BL manga in the US begins in the early 2000s.  The first company to try their hand at it was Central Park Media, as part of their ill-fated Be Beautiful imprint, so how does its first release hold up nearly 20 years later?

GOLDEN CAIN (Kin no Cain), by You Asagiri.  First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

When a concert goes wrong, Shun is stunned when a handsome blonde stranger saves him from the crowd.  He turns out to be Cain, a mysterious new model with a connection to Shun's older brother Keiichi.  Shun is overwhelmed by Cain and his intense beauty, but can Cain save Shun from the overwhelming guilt he feels  and a stalker set on blackmailing them both?

Review: FINDER

 We are rested and ready to return with a month's worth of bad romance manga!  Let's begin with...well, "classic" would be too strong for this series so let's say a notable one from BL of the past.

FINDER (Fainda), by Ayano Yamane.  First published in 2002 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

Akihito is a freelance photographer who wants to use his skills to expose the seedy underbelly of the criminal world.  Alas, he's quickly capture by the powerful gangster Asami, who proceeds to rape Akihito, ruin his film, and set him free.  Akihito hates what Asami did to him, but remains determined to fight crime in his own way.  Meanwhile, Asami finds himself increasingly drawn to Akihito, protecting the young man even as he pursues him for the sake of his own pleasure.

Merry Month of Manga: PRINCESS PRINCE

Once upon a time, if you wanted a fairy-tale-style shojo fantasy, you had to settle for books like this.

Thank goodness for progress. 

PRINCESS PRINCE (Purinsesu Purinsesu), by Tomoko Taniguchi.  First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:

The kingdom of Gemstone is seemingly happy and peaceful, but for the royal twins of the land it is anything but that.  When they were born, a prophecy foretold that one of them would have to be raised as a girl to prevent disaster.  Ever since, Prince Lawrence (aka "Lori") has had to hide his true identity, even has he pines for his best friend Jenny.  Meanwhile, his brother Matthew has to deal with Brandon, a former thief who is convinced that Matthew is the one hiding their true gender.  Can their secret survive jealous angel birds, near drownings, and a possible mermaid?

Review: RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: THE GREY WITCH

Well, it's time to this site to emerge from its own quarantine (which has nothing to do with my falling headfirst into Yakuza 0) for another month of reviews.  Since much of my readership is unable to travel or hang out with others in-person, it's a good time to look at some manga about fantastical adventures with brave warriors.  As such, there's no better place to start than with the franchise that started Japan's love affair with Western-style fantasy.

RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: THE GREY WITCH (Rodosuto Senki Haiiro no Majo), based on the novels by Ryo Mizuno with art by Yoshihiko Ochi.  First published in 1994 and first published in North America in 1999.

PLOT:

Parn has always yearned to be a heroic knight like his late father.  He gets his chance when he reunites with Etoh, his childhood friend and newly minted priest.  When the two set out to attack a group of goblins menacing their village, they end up meeting with other adventures: a wandering magician, a dwarven king, a mysterious elf, and an enterprising thief.  Together they learn of a dark and terrible conspiracy against the land of Lodoss, and together they decide to set out and stop it.

Merry Month of Manga Review: OVER THE RAINBOW

Remember when Central Park Media released manga?

Yeah, I don't either.  While they were the first English publisher to put out BL manga, most of their manga output was no-name nonsense like this.

OVER THE RAINBOW (Ame ni Nurete mo), by Keiko Honda.  First published in 1997 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

A day at the amusement parks leads a pair of two young lawyers, Arou and Keita, to an amnesiac woman nicknamed Key.  They are charmed by her looks and sunny outlook, and to help her find her identity they start their own law firm.  Together they work on everything from divorce to plagiarism cases while searching for Key's true identity, hoping to bring happiness to each and every client.

Merry Month of Manga Review: DUCK PRINCE

If there's a mangaka who never got a even break on the North American market, it's Ai Morinaga.  She made some great comedy manga, but not a single one of them were printed in full, and all of them (including today's selection) now have all fallen in sad obscurity.

DUCK PRINCE (Ahiru no Ojisama?), by Ai Morinaga.  First published in 2001, and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Reiichi is a hopeless case.  He's short, pudgy, and ugly, complete with a bad bowl haircut and Coke bottle-thick glasses.  His family mocks him, his classmates ignore him, and the only person willing to give him the time of day is the lovely and gentle Yumiko.  She thinks he's adorable, even if that's mostly because Reiichi reminds her of her equally odd, ugly dog Mister.  Reiichi gets hit by a car while trying to save Mister, and when he awakes he discovers that he's transformed into a beautiful young man.  Of course, he's now a beautiful young man with the personality of a hopeless, insecure nerd.  Still, now Reiichi might have a chance at winning Yumiko's heart, even if he has to compete with an a ancient prince disguised as a dog and a teacher with ties to the dog prince's past.

STORY:

Leave it to Ai Morinaga to take something as basic as the ugly duckling story and turn it into a wacky romantic comedy that's more than willing to turn some old tropes on their head.

The big twist here is that the transformation from nerd to bishonen isn't the end of Reiichi's story, but the beginning of it.  He's still the same person underneath, and that person is still the same old clueless sap who knows nothing about girls or socializing and everything about gardening and sappy animal dramas.  He still has to find within himself a bit of courage and some social graces if he's ever going to get anywhere.  Mind you, Yumiko is far from your standard love interest as well.  She's not particularly impressed by Reiichi's looks, and since he's using an alias she doesn't connect this new boy to the sweet little nerd she's pining for.  She herself is kind of a dork, as she shares most of Reiichi's interests, and she's completely oblivious to the love polygon that's forming around her.  Her oblivious is the primary fuel for most of the gags here, as all the men around her compete for her attentions all while trying to keep their true identities under wraps, which soon enough turns everything into one big farce.

Lucky for us, the subplot between these men is just as interesting and fun as Reiichi's attempts at romance.  It onto itself is practically a fairy tale, with Mister and the teacher turning out to be caught up in an ages-old battle.  It was the teacher, Professor Takamura, who turned a prince into Mister the dog, and in turn it was Mister who turned Reiichi into a bishie.  Reiichi now finds himself tasked with helping Mister return to his true form, but he also wants to expose Mister as the dirty dog he is, as he uses his canine form to ogle Yumiko up-close.  This subplot keeps things interesting, as it gives them all motivation beyond winning Yumiko and their in-fighting only adds to the comedy.  Morinaga balances both of these storylines masterfully, so everything keeps moving forward and neither of them get the opportunity to get boring.  Morinaga's also not afraid to let the characters look or act bad but knows just how far to take it, and as such the jokes never descend into cruelty or get too serious.

Duck Prince is a genuinely fun, fast-paced and funny farce.  Its characters aren't deep by any means, but she gets a lot of good humor out of their quirks and conflicts and uses them well to tweak a few shoujo conventions, and it's a genuinely good series to read.

ART:

Morinaga's art is suitably broad enough to work for a comedy, but also good looking enough to appeal.  Her character designs are solid with lots of dark, shining hair and eyes to go around, and those that are meant to look weird like Reiichi and Mister are these gloriously goofy little chibi things with googly eyes.  It's all very fluid and lively with lots of broad expressions and action, and it complements the story beautifully.

PRESENTATION:

Morinaga's omakes are funnier and more remarkable than most.  The one she includes here is a great example of her well-timed and slightly immature sense of humor, where a boat trip to Okinawa and an encounter with a beautiful man leads to her learning precisely what happens when you flush a toilet on a moving ship.

RATING:

It's a crying shame that Duck Prince wasn't finished here, because even in its incomplete form it's one of the rare gems of the CPM lineup.  It's a hilarious farce with great art and if I had my will I'd rescue this one in a heartbeat.

This series was published by Central Park Media.  This series is complete in Japan with 6 volumes available.  3 volumes were published and all are currently out of print.

Merry Month of Manga Review: KIZUNA: BONDS OF LOVE

After yesterday's review, I'm willing to look at some better smut.  So let's take a look at a classic yaoi title!  Lord knows it can't be worse!

KIZUNA: BONDS OF LOVE (Kizuna: Koi no Kara Sawagi), by Kazuma Kodaka.  First published in 1992, and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT:

Kei Enouji and Ranmaru Samejima have been a couple for years.  They got together back in high school, when Ranmaru was a kendo champion and Kei was struggling to rebel from his yakuza roots.  While Ranmaru's kendo career was destroyed by an accident, the two have managed to survive and maintain their romance.  Things become complicated when Kei's half-brother Kai comes back into Kei's life, and it turns out that Kai is still nursing a massive, hero-worshipping crush on Ranmaru.  Ranmaru is now caught in the conflict between the two, each of them determined that they are the only one worthy to possess Ranmaru and willing to employ all sorts of sneaky tactics to get their way.

STORY:

Kizuna is one of the few yaoi titles you could reasonable classic a classic.  It's relatively old for such a young genre, the first major work from one of the genre's best known mangaka, and  it's also one of the few yaoi titles to have been license-rescued.  It's also a melodramatic piece of crap, one that's too sleezy and lifeless to be as intense as it wants to be.

First of all, even for an uke Ranmaru is incredibly passive.  He rarely protests when Kei and Kai start fighting over him, apparently content to be used like an object for their own selfish pleasures.  Mind you, he rarely seems to protest anything.  As such, he seems to be perfectly fine with Kei raping him in the kendo club practice room.  He's a-OK with his professor trying to drug him and rape him at a gay club, and he never says a peep when Kai takes advantage of him while still under the effect of the date rape drug.  Ranmaru seems to be blasé about everything in his life.  He doesn't even get upset over losing his ability to perform kendo, which you'd think would be a big, even traumatic thing.  I get that he's meant to be the cool-headed contrast to Kei, but cool-headed is not the same as emotionally inert.

Kei and Kai are certainly more forceful, but as characters they're no more endearing than Ranmaru.  Both of them are thuggish brats who take what they want at will and punish others as they see fit for getting in their way, all in the name of 'protecting' Ranmaru.  They're both stereotypical semes and I can't take either of them the least bit seriously.  Each of them rapes Ranmaru at least once, although Kai is slightly more loathable for doing so while Ranmaru was under the influence.  Both of them are locked in this ongoing grudge over who is the true illegitimate son of their father and who made the other's life miserable and neither has the slightest compunction about using Ranmaru to make their point.  Kai flat-out stalks both Ranmaru and Kei, and it's only for this reason that Kai is able to stop Ranmaru's professor from his attempted date rape.  If I haven't made the point loud and clear, they're both awful, utterly unsympathetic characters and I wished failure upon them both.  The only time Kodaka could muster any sympathy for them is in a side chapter about wee little Kai wanting his dad to visit his school for Parents' Day and a sympathetic goon trying to comfort him by filling in has his "big brother."  That would be incredibly sweet were it not for fact that Kodama tries to play it up as a romantic gesture in the end, which makes the whole thing in retrospect incredibly creepy.

I am genuinely baffled as to why people consider Kizuna to be such a classic.  It's a very basic love triangle that's populated by two rapey douchebags and a total doormat that only moves forward because of a lot of ham-fisted, exploitative twists.  I've read later works by Kodaka, so I know that she was (and is) capable of better stuff, so why do people continue to hold this up as her masterwork?

ART:

I will grant Kodaka this much: she is a good artist, and her skills were already quite refined even at this early stage of her career.  Kodaka apparently used to be an assistant for Sanami Matoh, and if you look closely at her character designs here, you can see a slight resemblance to Matoh's own style, particularly in the eyes.  That being said, Kodaka's style is far less dated and a lot more naturalistic.  She also tends to draw them leering in such a way that it makes me think that rapeface runs in Kei and Kai's family.  Kodaka's approach to the sex scenes is fairly mundane, being neither overly explicit nor tender and fluffy.  If anything, they tend to go on a bit too long and they start to get tedious after a while.  Still, she's got a good grasp on anatomy, far better than most of her contemporaries.  She's clearly not so comfortable with the action scenes, which is why I suspect she tends to obscure them so much with speedlines, and her backgrounds are just kind of blasé and murky.  I may have my misgivings with this series, but most of them do not lie in the artwork.  If anything, the artwork is the highlight of the series.  Yaoi art in general doesn't tend to age well, but Kodaka's art was (and remains) some of the best that the genre offers.

RATING:

Kizuna is a lame melodrama populated by a trio of terrible characters, and the only thing that saves it from a red light is Kodaka's solid artwork.  I'm glad that she got better as a writer in later years, but it's not worth it to revisit this work.

This series is published by Digital Manga Publishing, and formerly by Central Park Media under their Be Beautiful imprint.  This series is complete in Japan with 11 volumes available.  CMP published 9 volumes, all of which are currently out of print.  DMP published all 11 volumes in 2-in-1 omnibuses, and all are currently in print.

Review: RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: CHRONICLES OF THE HEROIC KNIGHT

Today's review could have easily fit in with last month's theme as it does with this month's, being an adaptation of a television series.  If only it were an adaptation of a GOOD series.

RECORD OF LODOSS WAR: CHRONICLES OF THE HEROIC KNIGHT (Rodosu-to Senki: Eiyu Kishi-den), adapted from the light novel series by Ryo Mizuno & drawn by Masato Natsumoto.  First published in 1998, and first published in North America in 2003.

PLOT:
Years have passed since the legendary knight Parn conquered the forces of evil and saved the island of Lodoss.  Now an apprentice knight named Spark wants nothing more than to follow in Parn's example and become a full-fledged knight.  It's too bad for him that once again, he failed to qualify.  Things get only worse when he manages to get himself a guard job at the royal castle, only to have a bunch of dark elves break in and steal a magical artifact.  The king commands Spark to take back the stolen artifact, and now it seems that Spark just may get his wish.  So, he and his band of fellow warriors must set off to find the artifact, defeat the dark elves, and save the day once more.

STORY:
Lodoss War is less of a series and more of a franchise.  It started in the 80s when Mizuno literally started doing write-ups of the games of Dungeons & Dragons that he and a bunch of fellow authors were playing.  These grew so popular that he turned them into a light novel series, which in turn inspired a popular OVA, comedy spin-offs, manga series, a TV series with a great opening and little else, and even more manga series.  This manga fits in that very last category, which to many would be a black mark against it right from the beginning.  Now, I'm only familiar with the Lodoss War franchise in name only, so I hope I can give this series something resembling a fair shot.

Unfortunately, that might hurt my enjoyment of the series simply because this is a direct sequel to Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch (which was inspired by the OVA).  The main cast from that story make cameo appearances here, and it's clearly supposed to be a big and exciting thing.  In many ways, we're supposed to be geeking out over their appearance in much the same way our lead does.  This also means that this series has something of the same problem that I had with the Tenchi Muyo review I did so long ago: it requires you to do some homework.  Again, like Tenchi this wouldn't have been so much of an issue when this book was first released, but pretty much everything Lodoss related has long since fallen out of print with the closure of Central Park Media.  As such, most modern fans won't be familiar with the original story, much less the sequel.

This story really does feel like reading through a D&D dungeon master's notes, because our lead and party fit almost perfectly into the classes we've all come to associate with that series and those like it.  We have a knight, a mercenary, a wizard, a half-elf, a cleric, and even a thief or rogue class by the end of the volume.  The most creative they get with these types is making the cleric a dwarf instead of an elf.  I could have lived with the blatant lifting of D&D classes if these characters had decently developed personalities.  Alas, they mostly live up to the stereotypes, and those that don't have equally one-note personalities.  Not even Spark is immune - his every thought and action is driven by his need to become a knight, and it gets tiresome after a while.  They don't get any more creative with the villains either.  They are an equally stereotypical collection of goblins, dark elves, and an evil king.  Naturally, these evil races are just as awful in looks as they are in morality, except for the females who look like beautiful women with darker skin and some funny ears.

The story follows a pattern that would also be familiar to RPG players.  The first half is spent setting up Spark and going through roll call for the previous warriors. The second half sets up the quest, gathers the warriors, and even gets through the first of what I'm sure are many a boss fight.  Even their motivation is rather generic, in that these evil forces want to take over the world (OF COURSE!) and our heroes are the only ones who can stop them.  The whole story just begs for more personality and more creativity.  To continue the D&D theme, what this story really needs is a more imaginative DM, because I feel like freaking Queen's Blade did more to create an original story from tabletop RPG resources, and Queen's Blade is little more than a parade of boobs in crazy costumes.

ART:
While the story is derivative, the artwork is not.  Natsumoto's artwork is handsome and detailed.  The characters are handsome, well-built, well-detailed, and the fanservice is kept to the barest of minimums.  The worst is gets is with Laila, the rogue/thief sort, who wears something that doesn't so much say 'medieval fantasy' as it does '80s hair metal groupie.'  I only wish these nicely drawn character don't exist in a more visually interesting world.  Natsumoto keeps things pretty tightly focused on the cast, so we never really get a sense of scale to the world of Lodoss. Worse still, it makes the fights harder to follow.  The biggest artisitic failing of this work isn't the fault of the artist, but instead the fault of Central Park Media.  No, it's not the fact that this was released flipped.  It's that the first half of the volume I read has bizarrely pale pages. They resemble nothing so much as a bad photocopy.  Things improve as the volume goes on, but it's clearly a printing issue and it does distract from the work as a whole.

PRESENTATION:
Central Park Media did have the good sense to include a lot of surprisingly dense notes about the world of Lodoss and all the races and concepts within that universe.  I only wish all this information could have been woven into the story organically, as it would have helped to give it some well-needed depth.

RATING:

The quality of the artwork elevates this just beyond the point of a red light, and I do truly mean just beyond that point.  I think I can begin to understand why this particular part of the Lodoss universe isn't so popular.  It's got a very derivative tabletop RPG structure and it doesn't supplement that with some personality or originality, and it requires watching or reading another series to put this one into context.  It's by no means offensive, but it is rather dull as a result.

This series was published by Central Park Media.  The series is complete in 6 volumes, and is currently out of print. 

You can purchase manga like this and much more through RightStuf.com!

Review: THE WORLD OF NARUE

The World of Narue (Narue no Sekai), by Tomohiro Marukawa.  First published in 2000, and first published in North America in 2004.

PLOT: Kazuto Izuka is your usual mild-mannered schoolkid, who one day happens to stumble upon an abandoned puppy in the rain.  The next thing he knows, a mysterious girl comes out of nowhere to beat said pup to a pulp, claiming it is a dangerous space creature.  No, she's not a pyschopath, she's Narue, an alien/human hybrid who is here upon Earth to better understand its culture and protect it from any and all hostile alien forces.  She soon latches onto Kazuko, and the two begin to informally date.  Unfortunately for Kazuto, though, that means he not only has to fend off his classmates from discovering Narue's not terribly well kept secret, but he also must defend himself from other girls from Narue's past who want to get to her via him.

STORY:  Well, this certainly is a manga that exists!  As I've said before, magical girlfriend stories have a tendancy to be lazy and episodic by their very nature, but Narue takes this to dull new heights of predictability.

The plot barely lingers on the fact that Narue and her father are extraterrestrial.  Indeed, it has to remind us of it with a brief exposition recap at the beginning of every chapter so the story can move on to whatever stupid antics will go on in this chapter.  I almost have to question why they even bothered with the alien girlfriend angle if most of the action is confined to mundane schoolkid stuff on Earth and most of the extraterestrials (including Narue herself) look just like humans.  The best the mangaka can do is try to tap some drama from this dry well of a story by introducing an older sister for Narue, who happens to look like her younger sister due to the effects of time distortion in space travel.  Sadly, it's far too late, far too little, and far too naked of an excuse to introduce a loli-ish sort of character without actually making her an actual loli.  Call it a way for the manga to have its cheesecake and eat it too.

Oh yes, this manga is not above fanservice.  Hell, it finds an excuse to flash Narue's panties roughly every other chapter, and the only time it was ever remotely close to funny was the chapter where Narue gets stuck in the bathroom wall during a botched teleportation.  Sadly, this was also probably the most inspired moment of comedy to be found in the whole volume, as the rest tends to be along the lines of 'Narue or some other girl does something outrageous, and Kazuto freaks out!'  Of course, this isn't just a magical girlfriend series, but it's also a harem, so practically every girl in a 10 mile radius is drawn to Kazuto and every guy drawn to Narue because...well...er...um...reasons.

Their irresistability is downright baffling, as they and the cast surround them are exceedingly dull and cliche.  They don't even TRY to give Kazuto a personality, other than the one chapter where they briefly call him an otaku because he likes some undefined show.  He's there solely to be the straightman to the strangeness around him, and to overreact and nosebleed over things.  Not even Narue has a personality.  Nobody in this manga does!  They just take up so much paper, desperately hoping that you haven't noticed how hollow and shallow the plot and characters are, how this concept has been done a million times before, and in most cases done a million times better.

ART: The artwork is just as mundane and uninspired as the story it illustrates.  The character designs are singularly flat, angular, and simple. The backgrounds aren't terrible, but are blatantly traced and exceedingly ordinary.  Most of the time the panels are so tightly focused that you barely notice them or they are replaced by speedlines.  The page composition is ordinary too, and the panels are rather tightly packed onto the page, almost to the point of being claustrophobic and difficult to follow.  Even the fanservice is uninspired - the mangaka just throws in a few panty shots and calls it a day.  It's all just as flat and bland as the paper it's printed on, and in the end the art is just so very forgettable.

PRESENTATION: There's a stupid little side story involving Kazuto trying to fix Narue's skirt, which is unknowningly tucked into her panties.  There's also a brief Q&A with the mangaka, which reads more like a side column from a magazine...which it mostly likely is.

RATING:
There's nothing original or interesting to be found in this manga, but it's also far too bland and dull to be offended by it.  The only thing that The World of Narue is good for is filling time with forgetable nonesense.

This was published in the USA by Central Park Media.  This series is ongoing in Japan, but only 5 volumes were published in the USA and all are out of print.

You can purchase manga like this and much more through RightStuf.com!