Merry Month of Manga Review: HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT

One of the biggest hits of this anime season is Ore Monogatari!!, based on the manga of the same name (and one I liked immensely).  As such, I was genuinely curious to see if the writer's previous works could compare.  What was the result?  Well...you'll see.

HIGH SCHOOL DEBUT (Koukou Debut), by Kazuna Kawahara.  First published in 2003, and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Haruna Nagashima was a star softball player in junior high, albeit one with a soft spot for sappy shoujo manga.  All these love stories have filled Haruna's head with dreams of love, and she's determined to make the most of her high school years by getting a boyfriend.  There's only one flaw in Haruna's plan: she is completely clueless when it comes to boys.  She's poured over every book and magazine she can find on romance and she's tried every bit of advice she can find, but all to no avail.  Then Haruna has a revelation - when she needed help with her game, she consulted a coach.  Therefore, she needs to find herself a love coach, someone who can tell her how to be stylish and appealing to boys.  Her choice of coach is Yoh Kamiyana, a surly upperclassman with a reputation for blunt honesty and a string of broken hearts behind him.  He reluctantly agrees to guide Haruna, but sets one condition: no matter what, Haruna can NOT fall in love with him.

STORY:

I'm trying yet failing to think of another shoujo series that I could compare to High School Debut.  I don't know if I've encountered a shoujo manga where the heroine was so endearing and charming, but the story tried so hard to suppress her charms in the name of the story.  It's not enough to derail the whole thing, but it does feel a little bipolar as a result.

It would take a harder, more jaded person than I to resist Haruna's charms.  She's lively and completely unguarded, and as such I was on her side almost instantly.  Yes, she can be naïve and optimistic to the point that it would give Pollyanna pause, but she's perfectly aware and honest about her faults and she makes friends almost effortlessly.  She's not your standard shoujo ingénue, and that's always a welcome change of pace.  Honestly, I'm kind of baffled as to how someone so sunny, endearing, and talented would be struggling for dates, but sadly the world of shoujo manga doesn't work in the same way ours does.  In shoujo, anyone who doesn't conform to the feminine ideal (that is, being cute, tiny, and interested in stereotypically girly things) is doomed to unpopularity, so poor Haruna was doomed from the start due to genre convention.

If I have a problem with the plot, it's that Haruna is so loveable that I found myself resenting Yoh's interference in things.  His advice to her sometimes feels like he's trying to suppress what makes Haruna herself - don't show strong emotions, don't show off your muscles, don't trust others.  It makes him come off like a giant pill who's projecting his issues onto her.  You see, Yoh became a grumpy bastard because of a bad breakup with his former team manager, a breakup which ended up turning the whole basketball team against him.  In proper dramatic teenage form, he's turned this trauma into a grudge against girls and romance in general, and after learning that I can't help but see him as a giant drama queen.  I will give him this much, though: he does give Haruna good fashion advice, and he is decent enough to come rescue Haruna from the inevitable rape threat that shoujo stories can never seem to get away from.  I just wish he didn't have to stomp all over the generally light mood of the story every time he came on screen.

In comparison, the rest of cast doesn't get the same level of backstory or motivation that Yoh does, but they're certainly more loveable in comparison.  Most of them are there solely for the sake of the story.  For example, Yoh has a few friends and a younger sister who all take a shine to Haruna, and it's their badgering that gets him to relent to Haruna's request.  After that, most of them don't factor into the plot save for Yoh's meathead friend Fumi.  He and Haruna have a nice bonding moment when she gives him a bit of coaching at a batting cage.  The two clearly have a spark between them as well as a mutual interest in sports, and best of all he likes Haruna just the way she is.  It all happens in such a short period of time, but Kawahara conveys much more of a spark between these two than she does between Haruna and Yoh, and despite what the story might demand, I wanted to see Haruna happy with someone who likes her for her, not someone who likes her only because she's been molded into something more conventionally palatable.  Still, the fact that I feel this way is a testament to her way with characters.  Even with the ones I don't like, I got a strong sense of personality and life about them, and that made it all the easier to get swept up in their story.

High School Debut is a rather inauspicious title for what truly is a rather charming book.  Kawahara knows how to create endearing characters, and those characters help sell what is otherwise some rather mundane teenage romantic drama.  I just hope that in future volumes Yoh will ease up on Haruna a little and let her joyfulness infuse the whole story.

ART:

Kawahara's art style is nothing all that special, but it too has a charm that helps elevate the story above most shoujo manga.  The character designs are rather conventional at first glance, but Kawahara gives it all an air of delicacy, one that's enhanced by her light (and somewhat flat) touch with shading.  She also tends to keep the panels small and tightly focused, which means that the backgrounds are mostly a cycle of screen tones.  It does help keep the focus on her pretty characters and their drama, so it all works in the end.

RATING:

High School Debut is full of charm, at least when Yoh isn't bringing things down.  It doesn't play with genre conventions the way Kawahara's later work would - if anything, it falls perfectly into step with them - but her characters are lively and well-written enough that you can't help but be swept up in their romantic journey and want to see things out to the end.

This series is published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 13 volumes available.  All 13 volumes have been published.  The single volume releases are out of print, but the 3-in-1 omnibuses are currently in print.  This series is also available in e-book form through Viz.com.

Merry Month of Manga Review: RISTORANTE PARADISO

Sometimes it's just nice to slow down and enjoy the simple pleasures in life - a beautiful setting, good food, and good company.  Today's review shows that this can be just as true for manga as it is for life itself.

RISTORANTE PARADISO (Risutorante Paradizo), by Natsume Ono.  First published in 2005, and first published in North America in 2010.

PLOT:

Nicolletta is a young woman with a chip on her shoulder.  Years ago her mother, Olga, abandoned her to marry a man without letting him know she was a divorcee, much less one with a child.  Nicolletta is determined to confront her mother at long last, going so far as to travel to Rome.  Unfortunately, the confrontation doesn't go quite as planned.  Olga convinces others that Nicolletta is family friend, and in turn she encourages her wayward daughter to stay in Rome and enjoy the sights, particularly those found in the handsome older men that staff her husband's restaurant, Ristorante Paradiso.  Over time Nicolletta's desire for confrontation is replaced more and more by her fondness for the city, her newfound interest in cooking, and her growing relationship with the head waiter Claudio.

STORY:

On the surface, Ristorante Paradiso is a gentle slice-of-life series all about the pleasures of Italy: the sights, the sounds, and the food.  Look closer, though, and you'll see that it's charming and casual exploration of its heroine, her relationships, and all the stories to be found within the restaurant.

All throughout the volume, I wanted Nicolletta to be MORE upset about her mother than she was.  What her mother did to her was the ultimate in dick moves, and Nicolletta has every right to be angry and resentful of Olga.  Still, I guess if Nicolletta had been on the rampage for the whole time, she wouldn't have been terribly interesting or sympathetic, no matter how righteous it might have been.  Worst of all, it never really gets resolved.  While the two do come to an understanding at the end, it's underwhelming.  Even the characters admit to that much within the story.  It's also kind of ridiculous to see how all their hang-ups could have been solved years ago with A SINGLE FREAKING CONVERSATION, and it makes both Nicolletta and Olga look a little dumb for not considering it.

It certainly is amusing to watch how Nicolletta and Olga's relationship evolves over the course of the book, step by awkward step.  In spite of Nicolletta's issues, Olga does enjoy her daughter's company and encourages her to enjoy the restaurant and Rome in much the same manner she does.  On the other hand, she still denies their true relationship in public out of pride (and possibly an unwillingness to admit her true age).  Age is certainly something of a theme here, particularly relationships between younger women and older men.  Not only do we have Olga and her paramour, but the restaurant itself draws in a younger female audience with its handsome older staff members, and Nicolletta herself has to come to terms with her own attraction to Claudio, who is not only much older than her but also carries a lot of baggage from his previous marriage.

The cast is fairly modest in size, but sadly anyone who isn't Nicolletta or Claudio kind of get the shaft when it comes to motivation and backstory.  While Ono did eventually address this when she created the spinoff book Gente, it does make the focus on our main couple a bit claustrophobic.  Still, all of the staff of the ristorante are fun and engaging, and Ono knows enough about Italian cuisine to make the process of cooking and wine selection engaging and even alluring.  Nicolletta might have started hanging around the kitchens just so she could catch her mom unguarded, but she (and the reader by extension) finds herself lured into the process of making all this good food and enjoying the comfortable camaraderie of the staff, and bit by bit cooking becomes the focus of Nicolletta's life, not some vague desire for revenge.

Ristorante Paradiso can be a little frustrating at times, but that frustration doesn't stem from a lack of quality, but instead from the fact that our heroine and her plight are so sympathetic that it's hard not to empathize with her.  It's a bit aimless at times, but it captures a lot of little moments, unspoken words, and a genuine love of good food and good company all within a single volume.

ART:

Ono's art style is unusual, to say the least.  Her art is sparse and rough around the edges, and her character designs would probably been seen as bizarre by those used to more conventional manga art.  Her characters are all weird, plain-looking, with froggy-looking faces and awkward, lanky frames.  That being said, she gets a lot of subtlety out those weird faces and after a while you get used to her style.  That same sparseness applies to the rest of the art, as Ono's backgrounds are kind of vague and she tends to draw lots of tall, simply arranged panels.  Ono's style may be idiosyncratic, but it's understated and elegant in its own right. 

RATING:

Ristorante Paradiso is an interesting and underrated manga.  It's the kind of slice-of-life story that will appeal more to adults than teens, but anyone who can appreciate unusual manga styles and quiet, understated stories of love and family could get a lot of enjoyment out of this book.

This series is published by Viz.  It is currently in print and available in e-book form through Viz.com.

Merry Month of Manga Review: MURDER PRINCESS

Well, let's keep things in the 'trying too hard' vein with a mostly forgotten title from a mostly forgotten company.

MURDER PRINCESS (Mada Purinsesu), by Sekihiko Inui.  First published in 2005, and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Forland is a land in revolt.  After the passing of King Xenos, the mad Professor Akamashi attempts a coup d'état with the help of his android servants Anna and Yuna.  Princess Alita manages to escape the castle in the hope that she can reach her brother, but she falls off a cliff.  Luckily, she manages to land on Falis, the rough, rude, and rowdy leader of a gang of bounty hunters.  Somehow their collision causes the two of them to switch bodies, so Falis has to try to pass as the princess while keeping Akamashi and his forces at bay until she can find a way to switch her and Alita back.

STORY:

It's kind of a shame that Murder Princess turned out the way it did.  The bodyswapping idea has potential, but it's hamstrung by adding a lot of stupid or pandering stuff that detracts and distracts from it.

As vague and silly as a magical bodyswapping can be, it's not a bad one and it can be used for the sake of good comedy.  It was quite enjoyable watching vulgar Falis try (and often fail) at playing the part of a genteel princess, and Alita adapts with shocking ease to pretending to being a servant.  I suspect that she's mostly glad to not have all this pressure on her shoulders any more, and Falis is more than willing to take on any pretenders to the throne.  While neither could have planned for it, they do make a surprisingly good and functional pair of partners, with Falis's gang of goons serving as support.

Of course, it's easy for them to defend against such goofy villains.  It's not that they are comedic, it's just that they are ridiculous and completely ineffective.  Akamashi barely says a word or lifts a finger, leaving all the hard work to his (*sigh*) twin loli battle androids, who are entirely annoying and completely incompetent.  It's never explained how or why this world still operates around kings in castles and knights in shining armor but also has enough tech to allow for battle androids and ballistics.  I'm guessing that Inui was simply operated on the Rule of Cool.  I also presume that's the same reason Falis can have a gang of shinigami and similar large, hulking creatures - he just threw in every idea he had and kept everything that stuck, whether it made sense or not. 

Murder Princess might have a slightly ridiculous title, but the core concept is solid.  It's just that the rest of the cast and the world around them isn't thought out nearly as well and that the villains are too ridiculous to take the least bit seriously, so everything else kind of falls apart around them.

ART:

Thankfully, the art style does make up to a degree for what the story lacks.  The characters are somewhat simple looking and cartoony, but there's plenty of variety of looks and expressions.  Falis-in-Alita's body likes to strike a lot of dashing, dramatic poses, her long hair and flowing dress serving as contrast to her expression of demonic glee as she slashes and hacks into her foes.  The action is drawn cleanly and crisply, with only the barest hint of speed lines used.  While the action scenes are kind of stiff, the poses from panel to panel are strong and dynamic and he uses a lot of low angles for dramatic effect, which helps to counter it.  Really the only thing the art lacks is a sense of setting, as backgrounds tend to be rarely seen and rather sparse even when they are.  Still, the artwork is definitely Murder Princess's saving grace.  It's not the most brilliant manga art you'll find, but it's skillful, simple, and well matched to the story.

RATING:

No one is going to mistake a manga called Murder Princess for anything meant to be deep or thoughtful, but it's got a decent heroine, a decent set-up, and some nice art, and sometimes that's enough to make the whole thing work well.

This series was published by Broccoli Books.  It is complete in Japan in 2 volumes.  Both volumes were published, and both are currently out of print.

Merry Month of Manga Review: TRIAGE X

The spring season of anime is well underway, and one of the biggest, ugliest critical flops is Triage X.  If today's review is anything to go by, this show was doomed from the start, as its source material wasn't good to begin with.

TRIAGE X (Toriaji X), by Shouji Sato.  First published in 2009, and first published in North America in 2012.

PLOT:

Within the gleaming walls of Mochizuki General Hospital lies the headquarters of an elite squad of mercenary assassins.  By day they work in the hospital, doing their best to care for people.  By night, they seek out the "black labels" of the city and kill them to excise the "cancer" of crime from the city.  Their jobs are about to get a lot more complicated, though.  Their latest jobs have not only brought the team to the attention of a dangerous criminal mastermind, but also a couple of bumbling detectives determined to arrest everyone involved.

STORY:

High School of the Dead was no masterpiece, but it was successful as hell for the Sato brothers.  So, how would they follow up that success?  Why, by letting the artist create something that's trying so hard to be edgy and dark that it becomes outright laughable.

So the concept for this story isn't all that original, although it's got a lot more Western influences than one usually sees in shonen manga.  We've got a team of vigilantes who might as well be superpowered considering the sorts of fights they survive, who fight all sorts of depraved villains with guns, blood, and boobs galore.  It's a 13 year old's idea of what is DARK and EDGY, as the characters talk about what justice truly means and how they're saving the city and blah blah BLAH.  This sort of gratuitous action feels like it would have been more at home in an Image comic circa 1993 than it does in the world of manga today.  The only thing that distinguishes it is the medical theme of the team and their terminology, and as the volume goes on it only gets more and more forced.  It feels like the medical theme is there mostly to justify the team's naughty nurse-style uniforms than anything else.  It even feels like the story is setting itself up for a DARK and EDGY twist with the team's mastermind.  He's a sickly old man who  determines the team's targets, and if he doesn't end up being evil or insane in later volumes I will buy a hat for the express purpose of eating it.  The sad thing is that would be a welcome relief because then at least one of these characters would exhibit something resembling actual character.

Yeah, Sato so clearly does not care about his characters as people.  The only person who gets any sort of backstory is Arashi, the token guy of the group.  It's suitably sensationalistic and vaguely tragic, bringing in both a bit of mad science and even a touch of superhero-style origin, but all it really does is explain why Arashi is covered in wicked-looking scars.  Everyone else on the team is a girl, and they're all slotted into a lot of the standard otaku fetish roles - the childhood friend, the tsundere, quite a few bubbly ditzes (including one that's both a loli and an idol singer), and so on.  Their opponents are nothing but cackling, sadistic madmen with vague but diabolical plans to take over the city because...well, just because.  They're so comically, simply evil that at one point they literally run over a little old lady because they can.  The detectives are relegated to dumb comic relief.  I guess I should be happy that many of these women aren't being pushed to the sidelines during the fights.  They are active opponents who have no qualms wielding guns, kicking ass, and driving fast vehicles.  It's just that it's not enough to counteract the fact that they don't have any sort of character or motivation beyond "has boobs, will fight."

I didn't mind all the action scenes, though, because they were at least capably handled.  The rest of the story is made up of lame attempt at lightness and comedy, all pulled straight from the cliché pile.  We see some of the girls working as nurses, and of course everything has to end up back at a high school so we can watch Arashi and Mikoto ape their way through all the usual high school antics.  There's even a running gag with Arashi being chased around by a flat-chested classmate with a raging crush on him, but it's so badly done that it almost makes you wish that it would go back to the action.  Note that I said almost.

Triage X is a throwback to 90s American comics filtered through a 13 year old boy's id.  It's all gratuitous action with little to no character or explanation to give it any depth.  It's not even enjoyable on a guilty pleasure level, as it's too shallow and dumb for even that.

ART:

As poor as Sato's storytelling is, it has nothing on his art.  Sato seems convinced that he's still drawing hentai, because he spends a lot of time on the tits.  Nary a page passes by that doesn't find some way to highlight the enormous, distended, and often inconstantly sized breasts that nearly every female cast member possesses.  We see them from just about every angle conceivable, and everything they wear either seems to have built-in boob socks or is stretched to its physical limits to accommodate them.  Oh, how I pitied their poor, futile zippers, straining so hard to contain those mutant mammaries!  Even if you're not a boob man, though, there are plenty of ass shots and bulging panty-clad crotches to complete the T&A quotient. 

Sato's love of fanservice sometimes goes so far as to become outright uncomfortable.  The villains apparently like to indulge in some sadism for the hell of it, but it's only the female victims that are stripped, bound, and whipped as the panel zooms in on their cries of pain as they cry and drool.  It's shallow and shameless, but in this book it's the norm.  I just wish he could have lavished that same sort of detail on literally anything else in the book.  His characters' faces are flat, flappy, and occasionally derpy looking, and all of the women's faces seem to be copied and pasted from the same template.  He's not even terribly good at drawing action.  He can use perspective and extreme angles well in scenes, and it does bring a certain dynamic degree to them, but the actual action is drawn in a disjointed manner.  It lacks any sense of flow, and it comes off like someone trying to translate a Michael Bay action scene to the page.  Much of the art tends to come off as flat and shallow because he can't really be bothered to shade anything aside from the boobs.  Looking over this, it's really hard to believe that Sato used to be an assistant for Rikudo Kihdo, a.k.a. the creator of Excel Saga, because he really cannot be arsed to draw anything well unless it involves fanservice, and this story begs for the kind of energy and non-sexual excitement that Sato is simply not capable of providing.

RATING:

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Triage X is a step down from High School of the Dead.  That wasn't a great manga by any means, but it seems that without his brother, Shouji Sato can't draw an action scene worth a damn and instead gets lost in fanservice.  Like I said, this isn't even worthy of being a guilty pleasure because it's too juvenile and thinly sketched to enjoy.  Triage X is a manga that's DOA.

This series is published by Yen Press.  This series is ongoing in Japan, with 10 volumes currently available.  9 volumes have been published, and all are currently in print.

Merry Month of Manga Review: LOVELESS

Let's keep going on a shoujo vein, this time with something a bit more recent, a bit more male, and a lot more problematic. 

LOVELESS (Raburesu), by Yun Kouga.  First published in 2002, and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

Ritsuka is a young man who is haunted by his lost memories and the mysterious death of his older brother Seimei.  Ritsuka mostly spends his days going to therapy, doing his best to dodge his abusive mother, and trying to deflect the attentions of his classmates and teachers.  Everything changes when Soubi enters his life.  Soubi is able to wield words like weapons and seems to have known Seimei in the past, but he needs Ritsuka for his magic to work properly.  Ritsuka is skeptical, but it seems the only way he can find the answers to his lost identity and his lost brother is by getting close to Soubi.

STORY:

I feel terribly conflicted about Loveless.  I feel like it genuinely has potential, and that she is capable of writing compelling characters and intriguing premises.  It's just that she can't quite put all of those ideas together into something coherent and that she spends a little too much time catering to the fujoshi.

The biggest source of that potential is Ritsuka himself.  There are plenty of shoujo manga that claim to have terribly tormented protagonists, but most of them would look like utter poseurs compared to him.  Ritsuka is tormented, but he actually has decent cause for it between his amnesia, the abuse he suffers, and the overwhelming guilt he feels over his missing brother.  He's so guilt-ridden that he justifies his mother's abuse as her lashing out at him for not acting like the son she remembered, and he does his best to deflect and lie to others to keep others from prying into his life.  This is a kid who feels abandoned by everyone and everything he ever knew or trusted and he's so hurt and guilty that he refuses to let anyone get close again.  Ritsuka is a character with a lot of rough edges, the sort that can't be healed with a friendship monologue and a hug, and it's nice to see a shoujo lead who is allowed to be less than a nice person.  Sadly, this couldn't last, and it's mostly the fault of Soubi.

With Ritsuka, we learn a lot about him in a short amount of time in a fairly subtle manner.  Sadly, the same cannot be said for Soubi.  He's a mystery man from beginning to end, even as he regularly feeds Ritsuka the clues and backstory needed to solve the mystery of Seimei's disappearance.  He too tends to shift moods on a dime, but here it feels less like a way to deflect attention and more like yaoi fanservice, as he tends to get rather hands-on with Ritsuka and declares his love for him almost instantly.  He even goes so far as to pierce Ritsuka's ear in a painfully obvious metaphor for their relationship, and it never feels like the actions of a real person. 

The romantic implications are especially awkward considering that Soubi is mostly using Ritsuki to help fight his battles, literally.  It seems Soubi and a number of others are caught up in an endless tournament of vaguely defined magic battles.  It involves a magic user who casts offensive spells through a set phrase while harnessing their power from their significantly younger partner.  Partnerships are also apparently hereditary in nature, as Soubi was literally commanded to watch over Ritsuka by Seimei before he disappeared.  What's the point of it all?  Well, apparently there's a secret organization that want to take Ritsuka and Soubi down for...um...er...reasons.  It's not well-explained, but then nothing else is in Loveless, so why should this be different?  It's such a shame to see a promising lead dragged down by such an aimless plot and such shameless fanservice.

ART:

While there's an interesting touch of angularity to Kouga's character designs, that's not going to be the first thing you notice about them.  No, what you will notice are the cat ears.  You see, in the world of Loveless virgins all have cat ears and tails, and Ritsuka keeps making a big deal out of the fact that Soubi does not and how 'adult' he is because of that.  What does this detail add to the story?  Absolutely nothing!  It's there for fangirl appeal, just like all the willowy bishonen found all over the story that frequently touch each other suggestively.  Kouga tends to play things a bit too close with the guys, but she also tends to get a bit too close with the panels for the art's own good.  It makes the fights particularly awkward, as they becoming nothing but an incoherent mess of words and inappropriate cuddling over a lot of washed out greys.  Otherwise, Kouga's art isn't bad, but it doesn't do much to alleviate the chaos of her story.

RATING:

Loveless has a great lead, but the story drowns out everything interesting about him in a bunch of fantastical nonsense and fujoshi fanservice.  It's far from a loveless series, but it's certainly a hard one to love.

This series is published by Viz, formerly by Tokyopop.  This series is ongoing in Japan, with 12 volumes currently available.  Tokyopop published 8 volumes, and all are out of print.  Viz has rereleased the first 8 volumes in omnibus form and the rest in single volumes, and all are currently in print.