Merry Month of Manga Review: DAYS OF COOL IDOLS!

Idols!  Lots of weebs love 'em!  I...don't really like them.

At all.

God knows that this manga isn't making much of an argument to convince me otherwise.

DAYS OF COOL IDOLS! (Seikou Gakuen Idol-gumi!), by Mizuki Watanabe.  First published in 2006 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

Tsubasa Nagumo hoped that switching to the prestigious Seikou school would help him get away from his dark past.  Before he has a moment to settle in, he's shanghaied into the school's Elite V class.  These students live in luxury in trade for working hard as idols, and Tsubasa is being brought in to serve as a stand-in for the agency's top performer Yui Hoshino.  Tsubasa has plenty of challenges before him: stalkers, jealous rivals, and his own crippling insecurities.  Thankfully, he's got an band of boy idols ready and willing to support him at every turn.

Merry Month of Manga Review: KING OF THE LAMP

I know that if I had a wish, then I would have wished that I would have never stumbled upon today's offering, an obscure little title from the Go!Comi library.

KING OF THE LAMP (Lamp no Ou-sama), by Takako Shigematsu.  First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Long ago, a raunchy king stole 1000 women to fill out his harem.  As punishment for his crimes, he was turned into a genie who must fulfill the wishes of 1000 women before he can be freed.  Thus, we watch him work his magic with a shy girl who wants her sempai to notice her, an older sister crushing on her baby brother's kindergarten teacher, and an awkward girl in love with her older sister's blind boyfriend.  Also included are stories about a young woman with a pair of mysterious guardians and a medium and their guardian spirit trying to shake off an otaku with an eye for the supernatural.

Merry Month of Manga Review: ANGEL'S COFFIN

Once again, we return to the works of You Higuri, a mangaka with a love of history and an even greater love of turning real historical events into shoujo-tinged nonsense.

ANGEL'S COFFIN (Tenshi no Hutsugi - Ave Maria), by You Higuri.  First published in 2000 and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Marie is a minor noblewoman in the dying days of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  She has a massive crush on the crown prince Rudolf, but she doesn't dare get close enough to him to make her feelings known.  Then she accidentally summons a demon named Seto who promises he can make Marie's wish come true.  As Marie grows closer to Rudolf, Seto finds himself falling for her in spite of her cursed destiny.  Will he come to terms with his feelings or are he, Marie, and the world doomed to burn together?

Merry Month of Manga Review: TENSHI JA NAI!!

Last month I ranted about how awful Maria Holic is.  What I didn't know at the time is that there was another variation on the same idea that was done more in a shoujo vein, and that it was just as unlikable as that previous series.

TENSHI JA NAI!! (I'm No Angel), by Takako Shigematsu.  First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

Hikaru just wants to be left alone.  She modeled briefly as a child and all she got out of it was a lot of attention from bullies.  Ever since, Hikaru has done her best to coast through her school years without attracting any sort of attention.  Her plans go to hell when her new all-girls' school decides to have her room with Izumi Kido, a popular actress and idol singer.  Hikaru soon learns Izumi's secret: he's a man who only poses as a woman.  Both Izumi and his manager Yasukuni are determined to keep this secret at any cost, and they are not above blackmailing Hikaru to achieve this. It seems that between this, jealous classmates, and some family secrets of her own, Hikaru is going to need to make some all-new plans if she's going to survive.

Merry Month of Manga Review: BOUND BEAUTY

Go!Comi had a particular fondness for Mick Takeuchi.  Who is she?  No one but people who pick up out-of-print shoujo release like me remembers, but the folks at Go!Comi were so fond of her that they licensed not one, not two, but three of her manga.  Luckily, we're looking at what is the most recent and (arguably) the best of the lot today.

BOUND BEAUTY (Shibariya Komachi), by Mick Takeuchi.  First published in 2006 and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

Chiyako has a talent.  She calls it 'fortunetelling,' but in truth it's more like she can see the red strings of fate that tie people together.  She's used it to great effect and modest profit, funds she hopes to use to get away from her loutish father.  Then one day she follows her school's calligraphy master to a strange mansion and stumbles upon a great secret.  It seems her teacher is teaming up with the scholarly Aya and the hot-headed Hirotsuna to master the various strings of fate.  An accident leaves Chiyako in a child's body but grants her the ability the manipulate fate herself and thus join the team.  Now she must learn to adapt to her new teammates of Tyers and control her powers if she is ever going to be able to return to normal.

Merry Month of Manga Review: THE DEVIL WITHIN

I can't believe that I found ANOTHER shoujo manga with a shota complex.  How the hell does this keep happening?

THE DEVIL WITHIN (Tenshi no Naka ni Akuma Ari), by Ryo Takagi.  First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Rion knows two things for certain: grown men are nothing but devils, while young boys are nothing but pure, beautiful angels.  A childhood trauma led her to this conclusion, and ever since she can only find herself attracted to pre-pubescent boys. This throws a wrench in her father's business plans, as he's determined to marry her to one of three teenaged heirs for his benefit.  Neither the boys nor Rion's father care about getting her consent on the matter - they're just determined to profit from the connections.  All the while, Rion pines for the angelic-looking boy in the apartment below hers even as he abuses her verbally at every turn.  Soon Rion discovers that there's more than just a business deal at stake with her choice of husband and that her choices may have divine implications.

Merry Month of Manga Review: CANTARELLA

It's rare to find historical shoujo that isn't about a romance, but leave it to Go!Comi to deliver one of the better ones I've ever found.

CANTARELLA (Kantarera), by You Higuri.  First published in 2001 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

The Borgias are one of history's most notorious families, accused of every crime and sin imaginable.  This is especially true for the scion of the famile, Cesare Borgia.  In this version, Cesare is cursed from birth, as his father literally sells Cesare's soul to the devil so he can become Pope.  As the young boy grows up, he finds few allies save for his innocent younger sister Lucrezia and his first mother Vannozza.  As he grows into a young man, he hardens his heart against the world so that he may strike out at those who oppose him.  What is unknown is if he is already an irredeemable monster or if even he has a chance at salvation.

Merry Month of Manga Review: CROWN

I've always felt a little bad for Go!Comi.  They were one of the many B- and C-list manga publishers from the 2000s, and their gimmick was that they focused exclusively on shoujo.  They did have good enough taste and luck to bring out Afterschool Nightmare in full, but a lot of their titles simply flew under everyone's radar and many were never finished.  Even manga like today's selection, a collaboration between a classic shoujo writer and a popular BL artist, suffer a similar fate.

CROWN (Kuraun), written by Shinji Wada & drawn by You Higuri.  First published in 2005, and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Mahiro Shinomiya has had a hard life.  After her parents died, she was forced out of her home by grasping, scheming relatives, and now she must work multiple part-time jobs just to get by.  The only mementos she has of her past are a photo of her parents, a pendant with mystic powers, and vague memories of an older brother.  That same older brother, Ren, comes charging back into her life, revealing himself to be a professional mercenary.  It turns out that he's come back for more than just a family reunion.  He and Mahiro are the heirs to a foreign kingdom, and the pretender to the throne is determined to eliminate both of them by any means necessary.  Now Mahiro, Ren, and his partner Jake must work together if they are to survive.

STORY:

Shinji Wada is something of a legend in Japan, having created the long-running shoujo series Sukeban Deka, about a delinquent girl who solves mysteries. He hadn't done a manga in over a decade before starting this one, but if this story is anything to go by, he hadn't lost his touch.  While things can get a bit clichéd at times, Crown is a highly entertaining and timeless sort of tale.

It does start off a bit roughly.  It's never a good sign when one needs background characters to explain the lead's backstory to the audience, and it's not a good sign when your lead's backstory is so damn tragic that she gives Cinderella a run for her money.  That backstory sets the tone for Mahiro for the rest of the story, as someone who suffers tragically in a noble manner.  If she were any more innocent and sweet, she would have a big poufy ballgown and would be swishing around with all the other Disney princesses.  She even has a magic artifact, the titular gem which does pretty much whatever the plot needs it to do.  It can divinate romance, it can find hidden entrances, it can even define a person's moral character, and it serves as both the resident Macguffin and a Get Out of Plot Complications Free card.  So yeah, Mahiro is a little bit useless and a little bit juvenile for a heroine, and I do wish she had more of a grasp on the severity of  her situation or at least wasn't quite so dependent on her brother, even if he can kill a man multiple times before he hits the ground.

At least Ren and Jake are relatively likeable.  They're both cool and competent but they never come off as superhuman.  Ren himself is charming and affable while Jake is more awkward due to his less than stellar ability to speak Japanese and because he's clearly growing a bit sweet on Mahiro.  They do have a shockingly blasé attitude about collateral damage, though.  At one point they literally fake a hostage situation in a plush Roppongi Hills building, only to blow said building sky-high in the name of stopping their enemies and exposing a gun trafficker.  Their actions may be in the name of good and self-preservation, but it's kind of weird how the story just blows off major actions like that as no big deal, diving straight back into Happy Family Time like it's no big deal.

Maybe their acts would have a greater sense of gravity to them were the villians not quite so broad.  Mahiro's adoptive parents are the sort of family you usually only see in Roald Dahl books.  They're all fat, coarse, greedy bastards who think nothing of trashing the place or wasting Mahiro's inheritance, and they're dispatched so fast from the story that it's almost laughable.  The proper villain is the false queen of Ren and Mahiro's made-up kingdom.  She wants them out of the picture because she's a greedy racist and she needs Mahiro's Macguffin pendant to legitimize her claim to the throne.  That's why she's perfectly ready to spend no small amount of money on weapons and mercenaries to make it all happen.  If she were more blatantly, nakedly evil, she would have a top hat, a cape, and a handlebar mustache to twirl.  The only evil person who gets any sort of character is the ludicrously named Chrondrite Bourne.  He's another ex-mercenary who holds a grudge against Ren and Jake, but he gets disarmed through quick action and Mahiro's infallible belief that he's a good guy deep down.  Just like that, he's on their side, and at this point the story betrays that it's shaping up to be a bit of a reverse harem. 

What's really strange is that for all its faults (and as I've noted, it has many), Crown is a genuinely enjoyable story, successfully merging shonen-style military action with shoujo fluff.  It's just that it falls apart the moment you start to look deeper.  The leads are pleasant but insubstantial.  The action is thrilling, but the villains are ridiculous and any real threat to our leads gets explained away in an instant.  It's content to coast on the thrills of big action pieces and pretty guys but not to turn them into something truly memorable.

ART:

You Higuri is no stranger to this blog.  She's mostly known for her BL works, and even those that aren't explicitly yaoi tend to retain a bit of slashiness.  Here she's working solely as an artist, though, so the hoyay is all but nonexistent.  Still, she was a good choice for this work, as her appealingly attractive characters and her nicely rendered backgrounds make this a generally good-looking work.  I still suspect that Chrondrite is nothing but a rip-off of Full Metal Panic's Sosuke Sagara, though.  He's got the same hair, the same cross-shaped scar on his cheek, and the same profession, and that similarity would have only been more obvious when this first came out, as that particular franchise was still going strong at the time.  Higuri also apparently has something against fat people, as both Mahiro's adoptive family and the evil pretender queen are distinctly heavy set for no particular reason other than we're mean to associate non-pretty people with evil.  Higuri does use a lot of dramatic angles and lighting throughout the manga, but Higuri is clearly more comfortable drawing cute girls and sleekly handsome guys than she is with drawing action scenes.  She tends to skip over the actual fights and feats of violence, so Ren and Jake's actions come off like a before and after montage.  That's kind of a problem when this is meant to be an action series.  Higuri can draw really attractive art, she just can't really make it flow in a way that looks and feels exciting.

RATING:

Crown can be good fun if you let it, but neither the story nor the art stand up to any sort of close scrutiny.  The sum of Crown is far greater than its parts.

This series was published by Go!Comi.  This series is complete in Japan with 6 volumes available.  2 volumes were published and both are currently out of print.

Merry Month of Manga Review: 07-GHOST

Let's take another break from all this shoujo fluff to look at something full of battles and military figures and demons.  It's just a shame that it couldn't be something good as well.

O7-GHOST (Sebun Gosuto), written by Yuki Amemiya & art by Yukino Ichihara.  First published in 2005, and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Teito Klein is a promising young military recruit, in spite of his origins as a slave.  A chance encounter with some of his superior officers unlocks hidden memories in Teito's mind, memories of his time as a prince of the realm of Raggs, of his father's death, and of the church that took him in as a child.  This revelation now makes Teito an enemy of the state and he is forced to flee to the wastelands surrounding the military academy.  Teito finds refuge in the church once more, but now he's caught in a long-standing battle between two empires as well as the spiritual forces of good and evil.

STORY:

07-Ghost is a wretched mess of a shonen manga, throwing together all sorts of ideas and archetypes smashing together every idea it has without bothering to craft those ideas into a cohesive and compelling whole.

There are a lot of archetypes in play here - you've got the orphan discovering their forgotten past, a rebel out to take down a corrupt authority, an innocent caught in a battle between good and evil, a Chosen One who will save the world.  All this and much more are here and present, often simultaneously.  Maybe Amemiya could have turned them all into something good or fun, but it seems more he's trying to just barrel through as many of them as possible at breakneck speed.  Even during the ostensibly quieter moments, he just speeds through every event, conversation, and jokes like he's got somewhere else to be.  The story's lack of patience hurts the story in a major way because there's a lot of information about Teito and his world to take in and giving the reader some time to do so would have gone a long way towards creating a better story.

It doesn't help that all this disparate story ideas don't seem to fit together very well in the first place.  I can run with the idea of a magic-based military complex, even if it does dangerous skirt the overdone magical high school idea.  Then Amemiya has to go and add wacky bishops, shape-shifting mermaids that double as the organists and choir, and beings that are demons in everything but name, and it feels like Amemiya just threw in all the ideas he had and hoped for the best.  Even the characters feel lost within their own story, although that may be just because no one seems to have much of a personality.  Even after he rediscovers his identity, Teito is bland as bland can be.  His allies are either broad and wacky or just as boring as he is.  The villains are your standard issue evil-for-the-sake-of-evil sort, out to conquer all they see and as they vaguely hint at plot points.  This is a dreadfully boring cast.

Amemiya does try to bring some levity to this otherwise serious plot, but it seems like the only joke he knows how to employ is the running gag with a lecherous priest, and that joke is well and truly beaten into the ground by volume's end.  He also tries to give Teito's relationship with his best friend Mikage some sort of substance, and it's probably the only thing he gets marginally right.  He doesn't delve too deeply into either of them, but we do see enough evidence for a deep bond between them and thus it makes sense when Mikage is willing to sacrifice himself near the end for the sake of Teito.  It's still far too little and far too late to save what is otherwise a dull grey garbage pile of a story.

ART:

If there's one thing I'll say for the artist, it's that he does have a bit of a knack for action.  There's a lot of squash and stretch in the battles, and he uses it for good effect by having the characters thrust weapons, hands, and magic spells towards the reader, like a faux 3D effect.  It gives those panels a sense of energy and motion that they might not have otherwise.  Sadly, this is the only good thing I can say for Ichihara's art here, because much like the story it's sloppy, bland, and verging on incoherent.  The battles are a nightmarish mess of swirling magic, flying limbs, and shouting, and sometimes it's hard to tell up from down during those sequences.  Since he's putting so much stuff in the foreground, the backgrounds are all but nonexistent.  Even when they are present, he doesn't put much imagination into them, which is probably why most of Teito's world seems to be made up of rocky wastelands.  I don't understand how Ichihara can bring so much energy to one facet of his art but not bring that same sense of energy and excitement to the rest of his art.

RATING:

07-Ghost has a bit of energy, but no amount of energy can save either the story or the art from being a total trainwreck of a manga.  I'm kind of shocked it got relicensed, if simply because it doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would stick in anyone's mind.

This series is published by Viz, and formerly by Go!Comi.  This series is complete in Japan with 17 volumes available.  Go!Comi published 7 volumes, and all are currently out of print.  Viz has published 16 volumes and all are currently in print.

Review: AFTERSCHOOL NIGHTMARE

Last week's offering was horrifying, but this week let's look at something a bit more subtle, and much more disturbing...

AFTERSCHOOL NIGHTMARE (Hokago Hokenshitsu), by Setona Mizushiro.  First published in 2004, and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT: Mashiro Ichijo is a handsome young man, who would be quite popular were he not so aloof with others.  He's also hiding a major secret - he is intersexed, and worse still, he is starting to menstruate.  It's a secret he desperately tries to hide, which leads to him losing his temper at the slightest hint of his being anything but masculine.  One day he is pulled aside by a school nurse who says she is holding a special class for select students, one that according to her is necessary to graduate.  Mashiro soon learns that this "class" is in fact some sort of dreamworld, a place where the avatars of the sleeping students, visual representations of their deepest issues and secrets.  These avatars interact with and attack one another while trying to break the trio of beads everyone wears to force them out of the dreamscape.  Mashiro soon discovers that one of the other students in the "class" is Kurema Fujishima, a pretty popular girl who hides a terrible trauma from her childhood and a hatred of men.  They bond over their shared secrets, but Mashiro is afraid that there may be other members of the nurse's class in their class...in particular, that Sou, an bully from the kendo club with a fondness for picking on Mashiro may know his secret as well.

STORY:  I'm not sure what I was expecting when I first picked this manga up, but I'm very pleased and intrigued with the dark, complex pyschological drama that I got. 

I could argue that hermaphroditism doesn't work in the real world as it does here.  Mashiro describes himself as being a boy on top and a girl on the bottom, and hermaphroditism doesn't quite present itself so cleanly, but frankly that's nitpicking.  I could also argue that the issues that the children of the "class" are hiding all tend towards the melodramatic, but honestly I didn't care, because the characters deal with these issues in such interesting ways. 

The conflict Mashiro has with himself and with how he perceives genders is fascinating all on its own.  It's also surprisingly sweet to see how he and Kurema bond with one another, and we get strong hints that Sou's bullying may come from his own suppressed sexual issues.  Watching all these psychologically broken people confront their issues both inside and outside of the dream world is damn good drama, and Mizushiro's writing handles it and the characters masterfully.  The story never loses itself in angst, and it always keeps an undercurrent of mystery flowing, be it in the form of the identity of the other students of the "class" or the very nature of the "class" and the nurse itself.

The dreamworld conflicts are handled well themselves, as action pieces onto themselves.  Surprisingly there's not a lot of surreal imagery in this dreamscape - most of what is there is saved for the kids' avatars.  Mashiro's is probably the most mundane (being just him in a skirt), but in this world he is attacked by such things as a black knight in armor, a girl with a hole in her face and heart, or a disembodied creeping arm.  These sequences do capture the suddenness of change within the dream, as the backgrounds can shift with a thought or end with just a change of panel, leaving Mashiro just as jarred and unnerved as the reader.

Afterschool Nightmare is a compelling drama where teenage drama is only a front for the deeper, darker issues lurking within the minds of a select few kids, issues that they must confront and fight if they are to survive.

ART: The character designs, like much of the artwork in general, is typical of shoujo, but it's rather appropriate.  Here, the androgyny of the character designs is rather appropriate - after all, our lead himself is androgynous.  The characters are rather delicately rendered and there's a lot of subtlety in their expressions, which is good because they all have a lot to express (or repress, as it were).  The backgrounds are nothing remarkable and the composition is rather standard in its look.  There's sadly not as much to talk about when it comes to Mizushiro's art as there is about her writing.  There's plenty of skill but not a lot of artistic flair.  Luckily, the story is more than strong enough to compensate for that.

PRESENTATION:  There are a half-dozen color pages in the front, all rendered in soft pleasing tones.  They are a combination of splash pages as well as the first two pages of the manga proper, where the use of color is very appropriate for the story.  There are also translator's notes and an author's note in the back.

RATING:
This series deserves far better than its current obscurity.  This is a dark, complex story that left me wanting to dive deeper into the pysches of these poor unfortunate souls.

This series was published in the USA by Go!Comi.  All 10 volumes were released, and all are now out of print.

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