Review: MY HEAVENLY HOCKEY CLUB

There are s suprising number of shoujo series about sports.  Few of them could be said to be comedies, though.  Fewer still could say that the point of the series is to not play the sport at all.

MY HEAVENLY HOCKEY CLUB (Gokuraku Seishun Hockey Bu), by Ai Morinaga.  First published in 2002, and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Hana Suzuki is a lazy girl with two primary habits: eating and sleeping.  Somehow, this endears her to one Izumi Oda, who loves her from afar.  In an attempt to get close to her, he convinces her to join the hockey club.  Hana has no interest in either hockey or Izumi, but she yields to the promises of away trips to nice resorts with gourmet meals.  To get to that, though, Hana has to endure early morning practices and a gaggle of pesky, pretty boys.  It's a good thing that this hockey club tends to be more occupied with planning trips and meals than getting around to the actual games.

STORY:

Ai Morinaga has made something of a name for herself by turning various genres on their head for the sake of comedy.  Here she's doing double-duty by taking on both sports manga and reverse harems.  True to form, she ends up generating a lot of comedy out of subverting the readers' expectations.

Obviously, Hana couldn't be less suited to becoming the heroine of a sports manga if she tried, being both lazy and aimless.  She's not particularly interested in field hockey and shows no particular aptitude for it, so she's shoved into the role of goalie.  She's also not your standard reverse harem lead, either.  She might fight with Izumi off and on, but it's out of a sense of general annoyance than any sort of romantic tension.  Indeed, she doesn't take the least bit interest in romance or guys or anything that's not food and sleep.  So Hana doesn't aspire to be a great player or to get herself a man, so surely the point of the story is the build-up to the matches, right?

Nope!  That's the biggest subversion and the biggest joke in the entire book.  No matter how far the team might travel, shenanigans occur and the meet is inevitably cancelled.  Sometimes there might be fallout from these events (such as the time where the team is followed around by a bear), but most of the time you just have to accept the increasingly ridiculous circumstances as they occur.  That's pretty much the entirely of the comedy, as neither Hana nor her teammates have that much in the way of personality.  Like with most Morinaga works, it's got a rather particular sense of humor.  Either you will love it or you will be completely baffled.  No matter what, though, My Heavenly Hockey Club can be said to be like no other sports manga...in that it's not about sports at all.

ART:

I've always like Morinaga as an artist, and this series is no exemption from that.  Her character designs are generic and pleasant, which certainly works with the kind of gags she's going for here.  She's not afraid to veer them off into some ridiculous expression or some super-deformed gag, though, accented with much more wacky screentones than Morinaga usually uses.  At least she uses them well, letting them serve as punctuation for a punchline or an over-the-top expression.  Otherwise, the art is perfectly pretty and competent.

PRESENTATION:

Being an old Del-Ray book, there's the usual trio of an honorifics guide, a food-heavy collection of translation notes, and a translated preview of Volume 2 in the back.

RATING:

I enjoyed My Heavenly Hockey Club, even if it's arguably the weakest of her works published here.  The gags might be a bit more on the nose when compared to Morinaga's previous works, but it's just as subversive and silly as the rest and thus just as enjoyable.

This series was published by Del-Ray.  This series is complete in Japan with 14 volumes available.  8 volumes were published and all are currently out of print.

Review: BAMBOO BLADE

Now that I'm totally NOT distracted by replaying Persona 4 Golden, let's take things into a more active and athletic direction.  That's right, it's time for sports manga!  So of course the first example I could find was...a kendo-themed drama full of girls?

BAMBOO BLADE (Banbu Buredo), written by Masahiro Totsuka & art by Aguri Igarishi.  First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2009.

PLOT:

Kojiro-sensei is not having a good year.  His teaching job leaves him hopelessly broke most of the time, living mostly off of instant noodles.  He could distract himself with his duties as head of the school kendo club, but most of the members have graduated and it's on the verge of being shut down.  That's when he makes a bet with an old friend/fellow kendo coach: if Kojiro's team can beat his, then Kojiro can eat for free at his father's sushi restaurant for a year. 

Determined to win, Kojiro sets off to find a winning team, and he first sets his eyes on Tamaki, a kendo prodigy from a long line of kendo dojo masters.  There's just one problem: Tamaki is more interested in tokutatsu than kendo and has no real desire to take up the sport again.  It'll take time, effort, friendship, and even a sense of justice to win her over and forge not only a great kendo team, but some lasting friendships in the making.

STORY:

Bamboo Blade occupies a strange space, being not quite a traditional sports manga but neither the sort of aimless slice-of-life story that the all-girl cast might suggest.  Still, it devotes enough time and care towards its characters to make it an effective and affecting drama.

The cast is pretty universally endearing, if not all that deep.  Kojiro is mostly defined by his desperation, Kirino is your standard genki girl, Miyako vacillates between her sugary sweet public persona and the brutal girl lying just underneath, and the few boys that gravitate around them are mostly afterthoughts.  If anyone gets the lion's share of focus, it's Tamaki.  It would be all too easy to write her off as just another stoic anime girl, but once we start to see her home life we get a far more complete picture of her.  While she is very skilled at kendo, she's mostly viewed it as a duty up to this point, thanks to her father.  She's also got a very child-like fascination with super sentai shows, and from that she's gained a keen sense of justice and a desire to protect those in need.  As the volume goes on, we see Tamaki open up to others in subtle ways.  For her, the simple act of bringing food to share at lunch is big step forward, and on the whole it's qualities like this that makes her character arc both sweet and subtle.

Despite being about a sport, not much progress is made with the kendo club in this first volume.  Hell, the team isn't even fully assembled at this point and the closest we've gotten to a tournament is a one-on-one match between Tamaki and a bully.  This slow and sedate pace might turn some people off, even if everything else works for them.  Yet it's the sports-related stuff that helps to give the story some focus and forward momentum.  They have something to work for beyond 'make friends.'  They also have things like 'find more members,' 'buy new equipment,' and 'train for the tournament' to complete  Yet it also has a lot of sincere emotion and a minimum of moe pandering.  It's the sort of balance that a lot of manga strive for but that few can truly pull off, and Bamboo Blade is very much one of those exceptions.

ART:

Igurashi's artwork is well-suited for this sort of understated story.  The character designs are simple and cute, but also very distinct, very much lacking in fanservice, and fairly expressive.  Well...maybe not so much in Tamaki's case, but her lack of expression is part of the point of her characters so I can let that slide.  She tends to keep the panels fairly tight-focused.  That's not a problem in the conversational scenes, but it becomes one during those rare instances where the girls have to actually practice or compete.  She's got a bad tendency to drown the girls' movements in speedlines.  I understand that kendo is not as dramatic in movement as, say, saber fencing, but it's not enough to truly sell the reader on the speed of the action.  Still, that's probably the biggest flaw in what is otherwise very gentle and appropriate art.

RATING:

Bamboo Blade is a pleasant combination of sports manga and slice of life.  It's not something that I'm particularly compelled to read more of, but those who want a sports manga without the burning spirit angle would do well to give this a look. 

This series is published by Yen Press.  This series is complete in Japan with 14 volumes available.  All 10 have been published and all are currently in print.

Review: FIST OF THE NORTH STAR

Sometimes the universe lines up in just the right configuration to drop a little bit of luck in your lap.  That's my explanation as for how I managed to stumble across this particular (and not invaluable) volume at my local Half Price Books, tucked away amongst the American comics just in time to close out Old-School Month.

FIST OF THE NORTH STAR (Hokuto no Ken), written by Buronson & art by Hara Tetsuo.  First published in 1983 and first published in North America in 1989.

PLOT:

In a world ravaged by nuclear disaster, there is a hero named Kenshiro who wanders the wasteland.  Trained in the mystic art of Hokuto Shinken, he can take down any opponent with nothing but a few well-placed blows.  What he seeks isn't violence or dominance, though.  What Kenshiro wants is revenge against the warlord who took his fiancé from him and lords over the land with an iron fist.

STORY:

Reviewing a work like Fist of the North Star is kind of intimidating.  It's not just that it's got a violent reputation, one boosted by innumerable clips from the show and movie.  What's also intimidating is how much its still-dedicated fanbase has hyped it as one of the masterworks of the 1980s.  Now that I've finally had the chance to check it out for myself, I can see where that fanbase is coming from.  Fist of the North Star truly is more than just exploding baddies and "You're already dead."

That's not to say that it isn't violent!  Believe me, there's plenty of violence in the first half, and it tends to play out more or less in the same manner.  Some enormous, hulking marauder threatens others, Ken happens to come along, fights said marauder until he explodes, only to move on.  These instances are brief, but fairly graphic for its time.  It's little wonder that if these moments are your only knowledge of Fist of the North Star, you would presume it's just the story of Kenshiro acting as a wandering badass.  That's selling this series short, though.  There is in fact a lot more story going on here.

Halfway through, we meet Shin, the local warlord.  In fairly quick order, we learn that he has a history with Ken along with possession of Ken's beloved Yuria.  While we've seen moments of understanding, even tenderness out of Ken before this point, it's only in this second half that Ken is shown to be truly human.  He's not just some grim asskicker - he's also capable of love and regret, even in the face of a manipulative bastard like Shin.  There was a reason to care for Kenshiro beyond his great power, and at this point I was compelled.  I wanted to see what happened next, even if the answer to that was him fighting yet another hulking goon and finding a new way to turn him into bloody jelly.  In that sense, Fist of the North Star is a narrative success.  It just takes some time to get there.

ART:

It's a little tricky to talk about the art as well because the version I read has been altered from its original state.  In what I can only presume was a move to appeal to American comic readers, this version was fully colorized.  In all fairness, this was done with the full permission and supervision of the original artist, so this isn't a repeat of what happened with Marvel's edition of Akira.  It's also unflipped and printed in a large, almost coffee-table sized format, unlike the previous version released here.  Still, in doing so some of the appeal of Testuo's rich inking and hatching has been lost.  At least the colors are rich, if rather muted in hue as befitting a dark and dismal post-apocalyptic world.

Hara's character designs are both iconic and totally ridiculous.  Kenshiro, Shin, and the various thugs literally tower over everyone else.  Still, there's a fair bit of variety, even if some of the thugs are pretty much just copies of characters from the Mad Max movies.  Still, Kenshiro is distinguished by his relative litheness, an artifact of the influence of Bruce Lee on the character.  He still towers over the comparatively bland normal folk, but he's nowhere near as ridiculous looking as the monstrous, virtually cartoonish thugs he fits.  Hara's also has a brilliant eye for composition.  Every fight and dramatic moment is perfectly framed.  It's not just that every punch, kick and explosion is clear and easy to follow, it's that every panel conveys the awesome, supernatural power they wield through well-chosen poses and angles.  The composition of every page and panel perfectly fits the mood of the scene.  For me, that's what truly takes the artwork over the edge into brilliance.

RATING:

Fist of the North Star earns its masterpiece status not through its plentiful and memorable gore, but through the heroic heart beating just underneath and the beautifully crafted artwork. That makes all the greater shame that this series has never been - and likely never will - be completed in English.

This series was published by Raijin Comics, and previously by Viz.  The series is complete in Japan with 27 volumes available.  4 volumes were published by Viz and 9 volumes by Raijin, and all are currently out of print.

Review: DRAGON KNIGHTS

For a while, I've been hoping that the popularity of 'otaku self-insert gets dumped into (usually digital) fantasy realm' works would lead to a resurgence of fantasy anime and manga in general.

As you can imagine, I'm still waiting on that resurgence.

In the mean time, there's plenty of old-school fantasy manga for me to peruse.  I just have to wonder why I picked this one out of all of them.

DRAGON KNIGHTS (Doragon Kishidan), by Mineko Ohkami.  First published in 1990 and first published in North America in 2002.

PLOT:

Rune, Rath, and Thatz are three explorers on the run.  They are trying to return a treasure to their lord, but there are countless demons chasing them who want to take it back by force.  They aren't too worried about that, though.  If anything, they're more concerned with making money and getting a good mean afterwards.  There's an additional complication in the form of Cesia, a witch's apprentice who has her own plans for the hapless trio.  Will the knights ever make it back to Draqueen with their prize or is their quest doomed to fail?

STORY:

Dragon Knights most assuredly comes from a different time, a time when high fantasy manga were so common that many a manga tried to ride on the coattails of The Slayers and do comedic riffs on those tropes.  What boggles me about it is how it managed to last so long because it's a deeply uninspired, confusing, and awkward comedic riff on high fantasy tropes. 

The back cover blurb explains that our leads are meant to be an elf, a demon, and a human.  It's a good thing that they did because I could barely distinguish which character was which, much less any difference in species.  They spend most of their time bickering about money, food, and occasionally over who has to dress in drag for the plan of the day.  These guys aren't so much daring, dashing heroes so much as they just happen to stumble their way into success.  So yeah, these guys are very much in the Slayers mold, but Okhami clearly missed what made the main cast of Slayers work.  Yes, the main characters there would fight amongst themselves and act like gluttons from time to time.  The difference is that each of them were distinct personalities and that when the plot demanded it, they could successfully work together.  In comparison, the main trio here are completely dysfunctional and completely interchangeable and I simply couldn't care less about them.

That's a big enough problem on its own, but Dragon Knights' plot is also vague as hell.  It starts off badly as the story starts off in media res.  Thus we have no idea why Nardil's head is so damn important to these people or who this Lord Lykouleon is.  Then the plot (such as it is) will take a hard turn into a tangent where the trio might raid a dungeon or fight some demon for a chapter.  The only continuous plot that can be followed is Cesia's.  We learn who she is, what her motivation is, and she demonstrates a bit of cleverness in how she manipulates the boys into getting rid of opponents for her.  If anything, she's more compelling and heroic than our actual freaking heroes. 

Some might try to argue that these major flaws are part of the joke.  After all, Slayers and its many imitators were never meant to be about grand heroics but instead about the characters and the gags.  That might be true, but Dragon Knights possess no character, no humor, and all too frequently it gets distracted from its own plot.  It's just a confusing, lame mess.

ART:

Ohkami's art is downright BIZARRE.  She's clearly trying to go for an elfin look with her characters, but her designs are so harsh, angular, and bug-eyed that they come off as alien instead.  Their fashion are vaguely fantastical by way of the 1980s, something that only becomes more apparent when you look at all the weird, upswept hairdos and the garish neon colors on the cover art.  The tackiness doesn't stop there, though.  The pages are busy as hell as Okhami tends to stack and layer as many panels as possible upon them.  Because of that, she rarely has room for anything else in the panels save for our leads even in the middle of a fight.  That's a shame because the fights had some potential to be interesting as they use not only weapons, but also elemental dragons.  Yet she insists on obscuring them in speedlines and sound effects and obscuring everything by inking everything so thickly.  The thick inks combined with Tokyopop's poor scans of the materials are the finishing touch in making every page visually incomprehensible. 

RATING:

Dragon Knights is a poor Slayers knock-off with terrible and deeply dated art.  I can't understand why anyone stuck with this series for as long as it ran because it was a fantastical dud right from the start.

This series was published by Tokyopop.  This series is complete in Japan with 26 volumes available.  All volumes were published and are currently out of print.

Review: YOU'RE UNDER ARREST

If you asked most manga fans about Kosuke Fujishima, most of them will admittedly look at you in confusion, offer a quick shrug or "I dunno" and wander away.

If they know the name at all, they probably do so because he's the creator of Oh My Goddess, which we've looked over before and remains a classic in its own right.  Those who keep up with modern releases might remember that Kodansha recently starting putting out his most recent completed series and releasing yet another one digitally.  What people forget is that he had yet another series released here, one that's mostly been lost to fandom memory with the shift to the new millennium.  How could that happen?  Let's investigate this case for ourselves.

YOU'RE UNDER ARREST (Taiho Shichauzo), by Kosuke Fujishima.  First published in 1986 and first published in North America in 1997.

PLOT:

Miyuki is a hotheaded gearhead with a love of motorcycles and the kind of woman who tends to act before thinking.  Natsumi is more calm and more traditionally feminine, but she's also good at coming up with unconventional tactics towards criminals. Together the two of them patrol the streets of Japan to protect it from any number of criminals.  Be it a celebrity who trades on his fame to get out of trouble, a panty thief with a very specific fetish, or a mystery motorcycle racer with family ties to the force, these two will bring them all to justice!

STORY:

You're Under Arrest is not without its charms.  Like Oh My Goddess before it, it's got an endearing cast of (mostly) women and an eye for motorcycles.  It's also mines a lot of good humor and interesting twists out of its unconventional crimes.  So why is it that I couldn't quite bring myself to completely love it?

Also like Oh My Goddess before it, this series is presented out of order.  This time, though, it's not to keep pace with an animated adaptation.  This volume is something of a greatest hits collection taken from the last couple of volumes, said to have been selected by Fujishima himself.  He might have been cherry-picking what he thought were some of the best stand-alone stories, but by doing so he and/or Dark Horse threw continuity out the window.  You can pick up most of the basics about our heroines through their dialogue and action, like any good manga should do.  Then it just starts randomly dropping other facts and characters into the reader's lap, such as Natsumi being smitten with a fellow officer or the fact that their coworker Aoi is either a transwoman or a transvestite man (the manga is never clear on this point, mostly because it's too busy using poor Aoi as a punchline).  Presenting this manga in its original, unaltered version would have prevented this from happening in the first place.

So how are the stories onto themselves?  Eh, they're alright.  Most of the criminals involved are decidedly goofy and pose no more of a physical threat than your average cartoon goon.  Sometimes there's a brief vehicular chase or a clever bit of pursuit, but Fujishima's focus is clearly on the cast and not the capers.  He's far more interested in fleshing out Miyuki, Natsumi, and all the other eccentrics around them as characters at his own casual pace.  This is fairly consistent with how he's treated the casts of his past and present works, and it's always been one of Fujishima's greatest strengths.  There's an effervescent charm to the whole thing that makes it fairly enjoyable to read.  That being said, the same effervescence makes You're Under Arrest feel kind of slight, even disposable, and it can't entirely overcome some of the dated humor and oddities of its presentation.
ART:

I wonder if Fujishima didn't pick these particular stories because his artwork had evened out in quality by that point in the original run.  After all, this series preceded Oh My Goddess by a couple of years and that had some wonky artwork at the very beginning.  Gone are the weird diamond heads and heavy brows of those early days, thank goodness.  Instead we have a lot of cute, sensibly proportioned girls, even if they do have a tendency to look alike and the way he shades noses tends to make them look like a dark little hole instead of...well, a nose.  The supporting cast (particularly the dudes) tend to look a lot more goony and wild in comparison.  He also lavishes a lot of love on the vehicles here, be it the various cycles or Miyuki's souped up little Subaru.  Sadly, he doesn't bring quite the same flare to drawing them in motion.  His panels and pages are nicely put together, but the action scenes aren't terribly dynamic on the page.  Fujishima is clearly more comfortable with the character and comedy-driven stuff.

PRESENTATION:

Like most old Dark Horse books, this is flipped.  Also like most old Dark Horse book, it's got a translation from Toren Smith and some of the other Studio Proteus staff.  That means the translation is smooth and funny right down to the smallest aside in a panel, even if that occasionally means a replacement pop-culture references which has become incredibly dated in the meantime.  I mean, when was the last time you heard anyone make a reference to Matthew Sweet?

RATING:

Going back to my original query, I think the reason that fandom has mostly left You're Under Arrest behind is that it lacks substance.  It's an amusing read with a cute cast, but it doesn't have the same sort of emotional attachment that made its predecessor so endearing.  Maybe if it too had gotten an unedited release, things could have been different.  As is, it's merely a trifle.

This series was published by Dark Horse.  This series is complete in Japan with 7 volumes available. 2 volumes were released, and both are currently out of print.