Taking a page from the KRAFT™ playbook, I’m offering a new “product” for Manga Recon readers: manga minis! Sure, they’re lower in fat, carbs, and calories, but they have the same great taste that you’ve come to expect from regular size reviews. I’ll be posting a fresh batch of minis on the last day of every month. Each batch will contain a mixture of new titles, reissues, and later volumes of previously reviewed series, as well as the occasional old-school title that’s worth the extra effort to find.

In the Starlight, Vol. 1

By Kyungok Kang
NETCOMICS, 224 pp.
Rating: All Ages

If you’re a fan of Keiko Takemiya or Moto Hagio, I encourage you to seek out Kyungok Kang’s In the Starlight. This Korean series is a bit more recent than To Terra or A, A’, but its aesthetic and shojo-esque approach to science fiction will remind readers of the Magnificent 49ers’ best space operas.

Kang’s story focuses on Shinhae, a high school student with a keen interest in science. Sensing that Shinhae is a curious, open-minded soul, her classmate Donghoon asks her if she’d be willing to house Sarah, a Korean-American exchange student. The catch: Sarah has ESP. But not just run-of-the-mill, hear-what-your-friend-is-thinking ESP—Sarah can actually harm other people with her thoughts. Undeterred, Shinhae welcomes Sarah and Radion, Sarah’s telepathic bodyguard, into her home. As if the introduction of Sarah and Radion wasn’t enough to hold our interest, Kang adds another wrinkle to her story when a UFO crashes in Shinhae’s neighborhood. Do Sarah and her sixth sense have something to do with the visitors’ arrival? You probably don’t need a Magic 8 Ball to arrive at the answer.

While its plotline feels like an amalgam of Medium, Never Been Kissed, and The Thing from Another World, In the Starlight offers many pleasant surprises for the reader. Shinhae is an appealing character, not least because she demonstrates genuine intellectual curiosity—a rare trait in shojo heroines. I also found her rocky relationship with Sarah compelling and plausible. Their petty squabbles, unspoken romantic rivalry, and intense bonding through confessional conversation reminded me of my own adolescent friendships. I admit, however, that my favorite part of Starlight was its retro look. Given the decade in which it was first published, it’s no surprise that the male aliens look like refugees from an intergalactic hair metal band. (The otherworldly visitors sport fabulous hair, ridiculously tight pants, and artfully tied headbands.) But don’t let the big hair and androgynously beautiful men fool you: In the Starlight offers readers classic sci-fi thrills as well as earnest—but honest—teen drama.

Volume two will arrive in stores in May. Volumes one and two are also available online through NET Comics’ pay-per-view system.

Kurogane, Vol. 3

By Kei Tome
Del Rey, 272 pp.
Rating: 13+

Volume 3 of this criminally underappreciated series follows the same basic template as the first two: Jintetsu, our favorite Frankensamurai, wanders the countryside, coming to the aid of (or into conflict with) an assortment of characters. In volume two, Jintetsu’s adventures had a slight whiff of been-there, seen-that-on-Samurai Champloo, as he encountered a beautiful blind performer and Makoto, a fierce, cross-dressing girl doing her best to pass as a boy. The first chapter of volume three is of a piece with volume two, as Jintetsu crosses paths with a creepy dollmaker in a remote mountainous region. But before Kurogane devolves into just another supernatural thriller, Toume takes the narrative in a new direction. In a complex, four-chapter story arc, we learn that Jintetsu and Makoto’s previous encounter wasn’t simple coincidence—the two have a tangled history that pits them against each other in a bitter yakuza dispute. Yet their rivalry is tempered by honor and grudging mutual respect—this is, after all, a period piece, despite the mecha elements—that compels them to protect and assist one another. Yes, we’ve seen the “I’m gonna save you so I can kill you later!” schtick before. But like so many other recycled elements in Kurogane, the gambit feels fresh and plausible in Kei Toume’s capable hands. I can’t wait to read volume 4.

Volume 4 arrived in stores on March 27th. Click here to read the PCS review of volume 2.

Trinity Blood, Vol. 2

Story by Sunao Yoshida; Art by Kiyo Kyujyo
Tokyopop, 168 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

Volume two of Trinity Blood offers more gloriously silly supernatural smackdowns—including confrontations between Our Vatican Gang and blood-thirtsy trees, mersharks, and vampires—as well as slapstick galore. The layout is, at times, fiendishly difficult to follow, a problem compounded by Kiyo Kyujyo’s decision to cram every panel with an extra helping of dialogue and detail. (I’m beginning to think he studied with my fourth grade art teacher, Ms. Schill, who insisted that real art covers every square inch of the canvas.) The pacing, too, is hectic. Characters chibi-fy with clockwork precision—once every three pages, or so it seems—and 50% of the dialogue seems to be spoken AT 70 DECIBELS OR LOUDER. Still, I’m hooked, so I’ll be shelling out the clams for volume 3 in the hopes that we’ll see more of the robotic Father Tres and coolly calculating Cardinal Caterina and less of the shrill, ditzy Esther.

Volume 3 arrives in stores on July 10th. Click here to read the PCS review of volume one.

Yukiko’s Spinach

By Frederic Boilet
Fanfare/Ponet Mon, 144 pages
Rating: Mature (18+)

One of my perennial gripes about comics—and by comics, I also include manga and manwha—is the way in which women are drawn, from the watermelon-shaped breasts to the barely-there outfits found on characters as different as Supergirl and Orihime Inoue. So it was refreshing to see a beautiful but normal female body, imperfections and all, gracing the pages of Yukiko’s Spinach. If only the book was more than just a highbrow validation of the male gaze!

The story itself is paper-thin: a French manga-ka meets a young Japanese woman, becomes infatuated with her, and makes her the subject of his comic-in-progress. He ruminates about Yukiko’s shoulders and tummy and face, draws intimate pictures of their time together, and waxes poetic about her subtle physical imperfections (i.e. a birthmark on her forehead). All of these ruminations might be tolerable—even poetic—if the artist’s obsession with Yukiko wasn’t utterly superficial. Yet we never learn why the artist has fixated on her. Is she intelligent? Interesting? Funny? Employed? And if she’s such a singular presence, why does the artist cheerfully accept a look-alike to be her replacement muse? None of these questions are addressed; instead, Boilet offers us lovely but empty experiments in visual storytelling (hello, time-bending narrative devices!) that only underscore the shallowness of his conceit.

The bottom line: if you loved The Double Life of Veronique, Yukiko’s Spinach might be your kind of manga. If that movie struck you as a stylish but silly excuse to film Irene Jacob in various states of undress, skip Yukiko and buy one of Fanfare’s first-rate titles—The Times of Botchan, The Building Opposite, The Walking Man, Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators—instead.

Yukiko’s Spinach was originally published in 2003; this review examines the second edition, which was released on March 7th.

Dramacon, Vol. 2

By Svetlana Chmakova
Tokyopop, 192 pp.
Rating: 13+

In the days since I reviewed Dramacon volume one, it’s won awards and been touted as the one good OEL title from Tokyopop that’s on the market. I’m not saying it isn’t, but I am still looking forward to Chmakova’s next series, one which will hopefully not be a self-referential tale about fandom. It will also be fun to read something from Yen Press.

Dramacon 2 is a compelling read, but at times it comes off more like an internet forum discussion than an actual volume of manga. At one point, all action in the narrative stops for a 12-year-old boy to start shouting about what is and isn’t manga, because:

“…because she’s not Japanese! Manga is a Japanese art form!”

The discussion that follows has taken place all over the internet, and in Artist’s Alley at American conventions for years. I can totally imagine Chmakova having to defend her art over and over again on her book tour for volume one.

Even though it’s totally appropriate and necessary to have this discussion, and the context of the Dramacon story is a good frame to discuss it in, the story grinds to a halt while we sit here and discuss it. Chmakova covers the scene very well, but as a reader I’m taken completely out of the story and jarred back to reality. I’m no longer enjoying a comic book – I’m back to reading a lengthy internet discussion about anime/manga fandom.

The bulk of the story is about protagonists Christie and Matt’s relationship. They live on opposite sides of the country and haven’t seen each other since last year’s con. Matt has a new girlfriend who is not Christie. Christie is predictably upset by this. In the meantime Christie has a new artist for her comics, Bethany. Bethany is a great artist, but she’s in a pre-med major in college because there’s no way that her mother would let her become a starving artist.

Bethany’s story is one that needs to be told, and Dramacon is the right forum to tell it in. However, once again, I am taken totally out of the narrative as veteran “manga” artists and editors give Bethany career advice.

I suppose I enjoy Genshiken more than Dramacon because although Genshiken is about fandom, it’s about a foreign fandom that I am not actually a part of. I live American anime fandom every day, and I didn’t learn anything new or exotic about it by reading Dramacon. The exciting part about Genshiken is the fannish part, but the exiting party about Dramacon is the actual drama.

Flower of Life, Vol. 1

By Fumi Yoshinaga
DMP, 200 pp.
Rating: 16+

Goddamnit this is a charming and likable title! Where’s my thesaurus?!

Flower of Life is an inexplicable, yet extremely charming new title by Fumi Yoshinaga, author of Antique Bakery. Because it’s a DMP title, I assumed at first it might be yaoi, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is not. Well, at least it wasn’t in this volume.

Protagonist Harutaro has started high school one month late after a bout with cancer. He joins the manga club at school, which consist of adorable pudgy Shota, whom Harutaro likes (as a friend), and grating otaku Majima, whom Harutaro doesn’t like, but is willing to put up with in order to hang out with Shota. The story is dominated in the second half when Shota sleeps over at Harutaro’s house and meets his family. I want to say his “wacky” or “off-beat” family, but those are cliche descriptions – Harutaro’s family is unusual, original, and likeable, just like Flower of Life. They deserve to be described in non-cliched terms.

Majima’s otaku hobbies and the manga club activities take up a good portion of the book, but otakudom isn’t exactly celebrated as it is in Genshiken. The otaku portions of the book are more like a nod to the otaku world, and Majima is annoying nerd in a realistic way. I can identify very strongly with Harutaro’s reluctant tolerance of Majima. I have had many friendships with people who’s friends that I did not like.

The highlight of the book is Harutaro’s parents’ unusual occupations. I don’t want to spoil it for me, but I will say that his parents’ jobs are so funny that I closed the book and laughed for several minutes, and made Noah read the last chapter as well.

I’m not sure what the point of Flower of Life is. I can’t figure out what demographic should be reading it. Girls? Boys? Both? Do boys want to read a book with the word “Flower” in the title?* Flower of Life is just so charming and likable that I’d recommend it to everyone. It’s difficult to categorize or describe. It doesn’t fall into in hard and fast genre like most manga. This is a charming, comedic story, with dramatic bits. I’m not sure where Yoshinaga is going with this. Antique Bakery was also somewhat hard to define in terms of genre. It wasn’t really a food title, especially by volume four. It is just as difficult to predict where Flower of Life is going.

If I wasn’t convinced by Antique Bakery, then Flower of Life has sealed the deal. I am now a Fumi Yoshinaga fan, and I look forward to reading more of her work. I’m also looking forward to watching the Antique Bakery live action drama after I post this review.

* Perhaps guys would enjoy reading a book called “Flower of Death,” but would they still read it if the cover featured two cute guys and a bunch of sunflowers?

High School Girls, Vol. 7

By Towa Ohshima
DrMaster, 208 pp.
Rating: Mature

High School Girls returns, with a re-designed cover, four color pages in the front, and cover flaps. It now resembles something from a Japanese publisher. This is a 100% improvement from the previously gaudy American covers.

Normally I wouldn’t waste my time on reviewing volume seven of anything. No new reader is going to pick up a series in the middle. However, High School Girls might be the exception. The story itself changed magazines in Japan at the opening of volume seven, and the characters are re-introduced at the beginning of this book. If you’ve never read High School Girls before, you could start with volume seven and still be OK.

For long-time readers of High School Girls (are there any besides myself, my boyfriend, Ed Chavez, and that Irish podcaster whom I convinced to read this?) volume seven gives us more of the same: The Moron Group continues to try to make themselves more attractive to guys in misguided ways; Eriko thinks she’s getting dumber; Kouda tries on insanely ridiculous bathing suits; The Moron Group faces a possible break-up, and the school trip to Okinawa begins, wherein Eriko and Kouda are mortified with embarrassment before they even step off the plane.

The highlight of the book is definitely Himeji’s story. A TV show she’s watching announces:

“Here’s a test for your man to see how much he loves you! Try telling your boyfriend you’re pregnant. By his response, you can tell his love percentage. If he says ‘Let’s have it!’ that’s 100%. If he says ‘Let’s abort it!’…then, too bad, it’s 50%.”

Himeji calls up her boyfriend to give him the test. His response:

“Huh!? Who’s is it?”

…earns him 0%, and Himeji breaks up with him. (She also smashes her television in the process.

High School Girls is one of my “Trust me, read this!” titles, with the reservation that it is for mature readers. The anime, recently licensed by Media Blasters, is not great, but it probably will be enjoyable to fans of the manga. My boyfriend and I find both the anime and the manga absolutely hilarious.

Key Princess Story: Eternal Alice Rondo, Col. 1

By Kaishaku
DrMaster, 192 pp.
Rating: 15+

Wow, this wasn’t a story “for” me. I knew I was in trouble from the second scene, which contained lines like:

“Brother! You’ll take a bath with me!”
“I can feel her breasts on me.” Sound effect: Press
“Let’s wash each other’s backs next. We’re just a brother a sister all alone.”

It took a lot of willpower to keep reading after those first 10 pages.

Besides implied moe incest, Eternal Alice Rondo is also the story of magical pointy-breasted bunny girls. When protagonist Aruto Kirihara isn’t being sexually harassed by his orphaned sister in the bathtub, he’s reading the “Alice” books, which are not Alice in Wonderland at all (in the manga, in the anime version apparently it is Lewis Caroll’s book). Not unlike the anime series Gakuen Alice, everyone’s internal magic power is referred to as his or her “Alice”. Kirihara meets several girls who have the ability to magically transform into large-breasted bunny girls for the purposes of battle. As is typical in some magical girl stories, at least one character has the ability to magically transform from a pre-adolescent into a sexually mature female.

There’s also some nonsense about finding the lost third book in the Alice series by unlocking the story in people’s hearts – pages literally fly out of the characters’ chests… and it probably kills them. For being essentially soft-core pornography, Eternal Alice Rondo has a complicated magic system, strict combat rules, and a plot with intricate details that I couldn’t really force myself to care about.

It’s rated “Ages 15+”, whereas High School Girls (another DrMaster title) is rated “Mature”. There is way more nudity in Eternal Alice Rondo.

One might want to find out what Ed Chavez or Jack of the MangaCast thought of this title. Jack really enjoyed Pastel, which I hated, and Ed is more of an otaku. Unfortunately Eternal Alice Rondo is strictly for a male audience, so I couldn’t appreciate it. There is also a 13 episode anime series which aired in 2006 – but I won’t be watching it anytime soon.

Ohikkoshi

By Hiroaki Samura
Dark Horse, 248 pp.
Rating: 16+

Fans of Blade of the Immortal won’t want to miss this upbeat collection of funny short stories also by Hiroaki Samura. If you’ve never read Blade of the Immortal, your experience reading Ohikkoshi
will be entirely different.

Ohikkoshi is a collection of short stories which feature a lot of Blade of the Immortal character designs, except, unlike Blade of the Immortal, a gruesome and bloody revenge tale set during the mid-Tokugawa era, the stories in Ohikkoshi are light hearted romantic comedies set in modern day Japan. It’s bizarre to see Manji, the immortal tough guy now cast as a lovesick college student. It’s as if Christopher Walken starred as the romantic lead in one of his earlier, funnier, films.

Some of the stories in Ohikkoshi are so realistic and true-to-life that it raises a lot of questions about the author. Are the tales in Ohikkoshi true stories about Samura’s college friends? Are the characters in Blade of the Immortal modeled on his college friends? If so, I hope my friends eventually draw me into their manga as a blind, dual-blade wielding assassin!

Even if you’ve never read Blade of the Immortal, you should still check out Ohikkoshi. Samura’s art style sets a great example to show your friends that not all manga is about girls with giant eyes and small chins. The stories are very funny and appealing and the art is fantastic. It’s only one volume long. Can you really ask for more from a comic?

The only jarring thing about Ohikkoshi is the length of the stories. Some are only two pages, while others take up a third of the book. That’s my only complaint. This is a worthwhile addition to anyone’s library, and a good title to loan to non-manga reading friends.

Princess Princess, Vols. 1-2

By Mikoyo Tsuda
Published by DMP
Rating: 13+

Not to be confused with Princess Prince or Real/Fake Princess, DMP’s Princess Princess is a bizarre title. Don’t let it fool you – even though the word “princess” is in the title twice, and it’s put out by DMP who’s line-up is 90% yaoi, and just because there’s a cute guy on the cover, all that doesn’t mean that Princess Princess is just for girls. In fact, despite the cute guys and cross-dressing and frilly gothic lolita costumes, Princess Princess is aimed at both genders. Tsuda explains in the author’s note that this started off as a boy’s love title, and then she dropped the boy’s love aspects.

There is an anime series of Princess Princess that was recently acquired by Media Blasters. I tried watching the first three episodes, but the production values were too low, even for my lax standards. The manga held my interest a little bit longer, but I really had to force myself to focus to finish volume two. A ten episode live-action drama series aired in 2006 – I’m much more interested in that, as many j-dramas based on manga that I’ve seen were extremely charming. I particularly enjoyed the drama series of Hana Yori Dango, Nodame Cantabile, Hana Yori Dango and Densha Otoko.

Princess Princess is the story of Kouno, a transfer student to an elite all-boys school, who learns that by dressing like a princess he can get free food and tuition. Two other boys in the school, both freshmen, are also chosen to dress as princesses. They live in a special dorm and are treated like celebrities in school. These “princesses” attend sports practices and games, and their presence boosts moral enough to make the school’s teams win.

And yet somehow, it’s not gay.

Everyone I’ve talked to about this title, including guys, have a hard time accepting the premise. It’s difficult to believe that just because it’s all-boys school, it’s a moral booster to have cross-dressers around… and that they’re like idols within the school. Not that most manga have believable, realistic, premises…

The other problem with the story is that one of the princesses, Mikoto, is unbearably annoying. Mikoto is freaked out about dressing like a chick, which is totally appropriate and believable – however, it makes his character incredibly grating. The author even admits in the back that she created Mikoto for another story and re-used him here. No wonder his characterization is weak! Fortunately Mikoto leaves for vacation in volume two and the story shifts to focus on Shihoudani and Kouno’s friendship. (Their totally heterosexual and normal friendship.)

I really like the way Tsuda draws eyes, but overall, the characters could stand to be cuter. It’s amazing that for an outrageous premise, nothing else in the story goes far enough. For a comedy, it’s not funny enough. For drama, it’s not dramatic enough. For a story about hot guys, the guys are not hot enough. The costumes designs are not outrageous or memorable enough. The characters’ back-stories are not really tragic enough. Princess Princess fails to go far enough in any one direction and sinks into a sea of mediocrity.

Furthermore, it’s pretty light on the backgrounds, and sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s speaking. That’s why I’m looking forward to watching the live-action drama of the title. Hot guys on actual backgrounds!

Kare Kano, Vols. 8-21

By Masami Tsuda
Published by Tokyopop
Rating: 13+

The Kare Kano manga was serialized in Lala magazine from 1995 to 2005. The graphic novels were published in the U.S. by Tokyopop from 2003 up to the last volume, released in January of 2007. The anime aired in Japan in 1998 and came out on DVD in America in 2002.

For the uninitiated, Kare Kano (full title “Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou” or “His and Her Circumstances”) is a high school love story – although it’s far from fluffy shojo. Yukino and Soichiro hold the highest grades in their class, and Yukino, obsessed with her image, sets Soichiro in her sites as her archenemy. The pair fall in love, but the story doesn’t end there. The author, Masami Tsuda, explores the inner lives of Yukino and Soichiro, and we learn why both characters have a deep need to over-achieve in the classroom, rooted in their family histories and childhood, and how the two characters change each other on a deep level by dating.

Tsuda doesn’t stop there. She builds the world of Yukino and Soichiro’s high school experience, fleshing out their group of friends and even a few background characters. Every character has a backstory, a love story, dreams and ambitions, and all the wants and needs on Maslow’s hierarchy. Somehow the use of pictures maps out the heart of each character in a way that a prose novel could not.

At its best, Kare Kano is touching and brilliant, and the characters seem very real and very human. “Kare Kano is the bible of my heart!” one young fan writes in the last volume. Unfortunately, the series is inconsistent. At its worst, Kare Kano is over-the-top and melodramatic. At times, the characters who seemed so real one volume prior are suddenly fantastic soap opera characters, like something out of Dallas.

At its worst, Kare Kano raises some troubling questions. Although it tells a very touching story of love, it is an idealized story of high school life. For example, no one turns out to be gay. No one breaks up and recovers from their broken heart. All of the couples who get together in the first 20 volumes are still together 16 years later at the end of volume 21. No one broke up in college? No one got divorced? Only one character is not paired off with a significant other – the girl who is an author of award winning novels in high school. Could that character be representative of Tsuda herself, who I suspect is unmarried?

Sometimes the art of Kare Kano is amazing, but more than one volume has multiple two-page spreads of clouds and text – or even the occasional nearly-blank page. At times, reading Kare Kano is like watching a really smart kid sleep through class. It is painfully wasted potential. It is the flashes of brilliance that keep readers coming back and makes them fanatically devoted to this series. I am not immune to this fanaticism.

I first encountered Kare Kano as anime in 1999. A webcomic I was reading made the fansubs available as RealMedia files. Up to that point I was a fan of Sailor Moon, but not a real hardcore fan of manga or anime. Downloading Kare Kano and seeking out the rest of the series was the beginning of my fandom. It was like falling down the rabbit hole.

Eight years later, the final volume of the Kare Kano manga has finally been released. The anime series left off mid-story-arc, and I have been waiting eight years to read the ending of this story. Anything would be better than the anime’s non-ending… or so I thought.

Volume 21 has broken my mind. I made the following comic about it:

Click for full view (vague spoilers)

Weirdly enough, despite being metaphorically knifed in the face, I still love Kare Kano. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome.

I have reviewed volume 21 below, but if you haven’t finished reading the book it is filled with major spoilers.

If you are interested in reading the Kare Kano manga in order to feel closure from the anime (and not just the manga for manga’s sake), I have provided a handy guide below. It is not actually necessary to buy all 21 volumes just to find out what happens to Soichiro and Yukino – however, some volumes are so intense that you’ll need to buy them two or three at a time.

Your Definitive Guide to the End of Kare Kano continues! Report card and reviews for Volumes 8 – 21

I’ve been doing this column for over a year! That would be hard to believe, if it weren’t for the enormous amount of manga that now crowds my bookshelves. Today I’ll take a look at several OEL (aka “World Manga”) titles, all from Tokyopop, in honor of the recent release of Dramacon volume 2. I reviewed Dramacon volume 1 in November last year.

Fool’s Gold, Vol. 1

by Amy Reeder Hadley
distributed by Tokyopop

Who would like this book: Younger girls, probably from ages 11-15
Who would hate this book: Boys. My boyfriend.

I had been looking forward to Fool’s Gold after seeing some sample pages at New York Comic Con earlier this year. Of all of Tokyopop’s OEL titles, Fool’s Gold had the best looking art (even better than Dramacon, in some ways). Fool’s Gold hit the streets on July 11th and I picked it up immediately.

Fool’s Gold is the story of a girl named Penny who is more interested in designing original clothes for her aunt’s store than in keeping up with her schoolwork. When Penny’s best friend is hurt by an untrustworthy boyfriend, Penny turns the school Geology Club into a secret organization of girls who identify cheating/lying boys at their school blacklist them as un-datable. Or more precisely – in order to fit in with the geology theme – the girls name jerks “pyrites,” or fool’s gold. In a short amount of time Penny has created a high school dating utopia where girls at the school are no longer attracted to jerks.

Penny used to be a loser at her high school, but thanks to her Geology Club she is suddenly in the center of the social scene. Will she go mad with power? The Geology Meetings seem to be quickly devolving into McCarthyist witch hunts.

I have almost no complaints about the art of Fool’s Gold. The style isn’t trying to mimic Japapnese manga, there are no “super-deformed” moments or ill-placed giant sweat drops. The only art complaint I have is a minor one – Penny just doesn’t seem expressive enough. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what she’s thinking or feeling. However, that could be the artist’s intent. I’m not entirely sure that the audience is supposed to know what Penny is thinking at any given moment.

I’m more weirded out by the fashion in Fool’s Gold. Penny wears some fairly outlandish things to school – outfits which I’m sure could’ve gotten her beaten up at the high school I attended, or at the very least excommunicated. It’s no wonder Penny was upopular before she started her male witch trials (or in this case, warlock trials?).

At another point in the story, Penny’s younger aunt digs out Penny’s mother’s old clothes and they take turns dressing up “retro” wherein retro means the leggings of 1990-1991. I remember those days of unwise fashion well, as I was in 6th grade in ‘91. I found it somewhat jarring that Penny’s mom could’ve been a teenager when I was in junior high – just like how it was jarring to hear Pearl Jam on a classic rock station in 1998. Later in the book Penny and her friends dig out the old “puff paints” and decorate some clothes. I’m no fashion mogul, but I’m pretty sure that puff paints were never really in style, and have never and will never be cool. Somehow I can believe the plot of Reborn but I can’t believe puff paints could be cool in any context.

My biggest complaint about Fool’s Gold is that it can be hokey at times. The “pyrite pirate” dolls that Penny’s cronies hang up in honor of jerks are well drawn, but I can’t help thinking how corny those dolls might look in real life. The wronged girls take turns throwing darts into the dolls while chanting:

“You fooled me once,
But that news is old.
I swear to shun you…
Fool’s Gold!”

I don’t think I could get my high school friends to say that chant sincerely. Perhaps we were all jaded hipsters who wouldn’t sink to that level of sincerity.

Even though I have a lot of complaints about the fashions in Fool’s Gold, and some questions about it’s poetic merits, I don’t have complaints about the plot. It is fairly compelling and I will check out volume 2. I could totally see a school library shelving this. If you are a younger reader interested in reading more domestic work, Fool’s Gold is not a bad place to start. Dramacon may have had higher highs and lower lows, but Fool’s Gold is a very even read.

Steady Beat, Vol. 1

by Rivkah
distributed by Tokyopop

Who would like this book: Junior high kids, probably 11 to 14-year-olds (cover age rating is 13+).
Who would hate this book: Girls who aren’t me. People willing to overlook the art. Texans?

Steady Beat has a strong premise and a poor everything else. The art is very novice, and the plot unfolds in an awkward way. I can imagine that in a few years, with more practice, “Rivkah” might put out a book that I would enjoy, but I suspect that book will not be in the Steady Beat series.

Protagonist Leah finds a love letter to her sister Sarai (I’m not sure how to pronounce either name, maybe that makes it more manga-like, or maybe it’s a Texas thing). The love letter turns out to be from another girl. Is Leah’s sister secretly gay? That would be enough of a plot on it’s own, nevermind that Leah and Sarai live in Texas – and nevermind that their mom is a Republican Senator and this might be OMG controversial.

In my opinion, there is plenty of conflict in finding out as a high school student that one’s sibling is gay. How will the rest of the family react if and when they find out? What is Sarai going through? How does Leah feel about all of this? How will their peers at school react if the secret gets out? I went to school in a small rural community where it was not OK to be to be openly gay. My friends who were gay struggled every day at school with unaccepting classmates and teachers and dealing with their parents reactions at home. There is a story about gay high school students waiting to be told in manga/comic form, but Steady Beat is sadly not that story.

We don’t get to find out the inner turmoil of Leah’s family because Leah quickly gets entangled in a series of bizarre hijinks that sidetrack the real meat of the story. Leah goes to meet a mysterious person alone in the park – a risky enough scenario without talking to a bum on the way. Did I mention this scene is happening at night? You’ll want to keep that in mind since there is very little indication within the artwork itself that the scene is happening at night, in the dark, although this is important to the plot. The bum who confronts Leah speaks in one of the worst lettering decisions I’ve seen in any graphic novel. It looks like he (she?) is speaking in the “Sand” font, one the fonts I loathe most. As Leah tries to escape from the horrifying genderless ugly-font-spewing bum she gets hit by a car.

Leah wakes up in the home of Elijah, a hot teenager living with his stereotypically gay step-dad/veterinarian named Paul. There’s already a lot wrong with the story at this point. Having characters who otherwise wouldn’t cross paths meet via car accident seems painfully contrived. Additionally, Leah is no longer driving the plot forward as the protagonist. Stuff keeps happening to her, but she is not driving the action forward. This makes for a weak narrative.

I’ve read some shoujo manga (Absoulte Boyfriend) that skimped on the backgrounds and used larger panels and more screentones and bubbles in lieu of detailed art, but Steady Beat is a much worse offender. The toned backgrounds seemed forced, the large panels seem like time-saving shortcuts. If I knew more about drawing anatomy, I’d swear that the characters were disproportionate at times. The way the eyes are drawn in “anime-style” just doesn’t seem natural. Rivkah is only 25, and she probably drew this a couple years ago as her first book. I’m sure Rivkah’s art will only get better in the future, but she could’ve used more help for volume one. To be fair, maybe she was really rushed, maybe she had a terrible editor, maybe it wasn’t Rivkah’s fault so much as Tokyopop’s fault.

The book itself is about 192 pages, but it is deceptively thick – it includes a two page ad for the next volume, nine “sketchbook” pages with commentary, six pages of ads for other books, and a 33 page preview for Mark of the Succubus, which comes out next month (wow, I’m not interested in the Succubus). So there are 50 pages of “extras” that have little to do with Steady Beat.

Plastered all over the webpages about Steady Beat and the back cover is the boast that Rivkah won “Manga Academy’s Create Your Own Manga” competition. In light of how Steady Beat turned out, I would like to see a competition for “Best Manga Editor” and read the winner of that contest instead.

Van Von Hunter, Vol. 1

by Mike Schwark & Ron Kaulfersch
distributed by Tokyopop

Who would like this book: Webcomic comedy-fantasy fans already familiar with the Van Von Hunter universe.
Who would hate this book: Most people not covered above.

My first exposure to Van Von Hunter was their winning short in Rising Stars of Manga volume 1. The Van Von Hunter short was hilarious, and the art, although clearly not professional, was pretty decent. I even liked it better than the Grand Prize winner of the first contest. Apparently the creators had had years of experience publishing gag comics on the web.

I was given a free copy of Van Von Hunter by Tokyopop as an example of a book toned entirely with the Manga Studios 3.0 software. Maybe Van Von Hunter is a poor example of the software’s abilities, as only one thing stuck with me as I read volume one was that every shape, every character design, and even many of the backgrounds, are made up of closed lines. Allow me to explain: Whenever you use the paintbucket tool, say in Photoshop, or even older software like Paint, the lines you are trying to color between need to be closed. You could use the paintbucket tool within the letter “O” for example, but you couldn’t use it to fill in the space inside of the letter “C” because the lines don’t meet. It’s an open shape, so the paint bleeds out and covers the entire canvas. There are absolutely no open shapes in all of Van Von Hunter – not even in the characters’ hair! Once I noticed this detail it drove me crazy and I couldn’t focus on the book at all. I understand that closing all the shapes must save a lot of time in their production process, but their art really suffers from the restriction.

Volume one of Van Von Hunter is not even a fraction of the amount of funny as the Rising Stars entry. Even a random sampling of their early webcomics turns up funnier jokes. I suspect the authors tried to move away from gags in order to build a plot arc that would cover three volumes, which is exactly what Tokyopop wants from all of it’s OEL authors. The three-volume arc might work well for something like Fool’s Gold, but it seems like a big mistake for Van Von Hunter. I would much rather have read a compilation of their gag comics from the original webcomic than the plot they came up with for these books.

Interestingly enough, Van Von Hunter was syndicated in newspapers for six months last summer – but only the gag strips. In the end, I suppose that Van Von Hunter is probably OK for a webcomic, but I’m really not into webcomics.

The focus this month is highly intellectual books that will not only make you feel smarter, they’ll make you look smarter when other people go through your comics collection. Each of the titles below (except The Push Man) are must-buy stand-alone volumes that you can loan safely to non-manga fans and impress them. This is what the Comics Journal staff dreams about at night. That said, these titles are not really for younger readers. A lot of issues in them are complex and probably too challenging for high school readers. By challenging I might me “controversial and explicit”. I definitely wouldn’t recommend these books for junior high kids or younger. All of these books are larger than normal manga – around 10″ X 7″, or a little smaller.

How to “Read” Manga: Gloom Party

By Yoshio Kawashima
Digital Manga Publishing

Who would like this book: People who like having jokes explained to them.
Who would hate this book: Hate is such a strong word, isn’t it?

Gloom Party was originally published as a 4-panel or “4-koma” comic strips and published in a collection by Shonen Champion comics. I wish this volume had contained some kind of introduction about where the Gloom Party strips originally appeared – and some preface with an explanation of the format of this book – but none is given beyond the description on the back.

The How to “Read” Manga part of the title is a bit misleading. Notice that “read” is in quotes on the cover. The “How to” refers to the bilingual presentation of the Gloom Party strips. Each strip is presented in the original Japanese with a translation written off to one side. Underneath each strip are footnotes full of cultural explanation.

I enjoy having bizarre or esoteric jokes explained to me. I also enjoy long cultural translation notes in anime and manga. But Gloom Party is full of translation notes and cultural facts that I have never seen before. It has an exhaustive explanation of every joke, in every strip, page after page for 182 pages. It is enough to try anyone’s patience.

One thing that drew me to anime and manga in the first place was an element of inscrutability. I could not understand what was going on in Sailor Moon when I first watched it because it followed a visual language that I was unfamiliar with. The foreign elements of the show of the show made it more appealing. The foreign-ness of Gloom Party, however, is completely isolating. No matter how deeply the translator explains each gag, most of the strips are completely incomprehensible. Even after reading the footnotes, I still have a lot of questions about each joke.

Imagine if you read a version of Gary Larson’s The Far Side written by Martians, and you’ve got Gloom Party.

The only other 4-koma comics I’ve read are Azumanga Daioh, Tori Koro, and some works collected in Secret Comics Japan. Gloom Party is not drawn in the “anime” style like Azumanga Daioh or Tori Koro. Instead, it more closely resembles an underground comic style closer to Secret Comics Japan or the brilliant Short Cuts by Usamaru Furuya.

I recommend Short Cuts and Secret Comics Japan over Gloom Party.

Gloom Party is unquestionably for readers age 18 and up. There are lots of sexually explicit jokes, naked breasts, panty shots, etc. Gloom Party proves that “explicit” is not the same as “sexy”. The only place you will find panty shots that are less sexy than Gloom Party’s is in the Air Master anime series.

Nevertheless, I would still recommend buying Gloom Party – perhaps on sale. It’s an excellent volume to pull off your shelf and confuse your friends with in the middle of a conversation about crazy crap coming out of Japan.

A Patch of Dreams

By Hideji Oda
Fanfare/Ponent Mon

Who would like this book: Intellectual fans of indy comics.
Who would hate this book: Younger readers looking for casual violence and sexy drawings. Anti-intellectuals.

A Patch of Dreams is a little hard to find, but well worth the effort if you like the intellectual stuff. It is a spin-off of Coo’s World (sometimes spelled Ku’s or Koo’s), a title that is not available in English. After the immediate opening it doesn’t matter that A Patch of Dreams is a spin-off.

Renei is a fine arts major about to graduate from college. Her senior art show is coming up, and she’s under pressure because of it. She doesn’t appear to have many friends at college, her parents are nonexistent, and the only person she’s really close to is the professor she’s having an affair with. Renei is slipping into a deep depression, and is worried she might be going insane.

Renei is having recurring dreams of Ku’s World, a continuation of a dream she had years ago, where every night when she went to sleep she would continue the adventure of the night before. She hasn’t revisited Ku’s World in a long time, but now the dreams are starting again. In Ku’s World Renei is accompanied by her estranged brother and her best friend who committed suicide years ago. There are other bizarre creatures and cute monsters, and a little thing that calls itself God. Creatures from Ku’s World have started turning up in Renei’s real-world life.

In Joseph Campbell’s theory of storytelling, the hero ultimately faces the void alone. This happens in volume 4 of the Nausicaa manga, but it happens in the first chapter of A Patch of Dreams. The creatures in Renei’s dream adventure encourage her to leap into the void after having a conversation about the nature of God.

A Patch of Dreams is heavily intellectual – at times overbearingly so. Readers who appreciate stories about characters facing the void and having conversations about the nature of the universe will enjoy the book, but it will leave many comic readers in the dark. The only comparable graphic novel I’ve read is the Sandman volume A Game of You.

A Patch of Dreams is flipped to read left-to-right, but I didn’t find this distracting. The art is a strange and sketchy style that reminds me more of a traditional artist’s sketchbook than manga. The characters are all very realistic looking (except the monsters).

A Patch of Dreams might appeal more to indy comic fans than traditional manga fans, as many black and white indy comics (Optic Nerve, Jimmy Corrigan) are incredibly depressing. As an indy comics fan I quickly became frustrated at the sad tales the American authors had to tell. A Patch of Dreams takes the reader through the darkest of depressing tales (there may be an abortion or two involved) but eventually it pulls together for a surprisingly happy ending.

The Push Man & Other Stories

By Yoshihiro Tatsumi
Drawn and Quarterly

Who would like this book: Mostly Adrian Tomine.
Who would hate this book: I didn’t like it, but I did learn something from it.

This intellectual round-up would be incomplete without a mention of The Push Man. The Push Man is a collection of very short 3 to 4 page stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi collected into one volume. Each story centers on a different character, more like a literary collection of short stories than any manga I’ve ever read. The title story focuses on a young man who’s job is to push people into already-crowded trains so that the doors will close.

Tatsumi’s art is amazing – in simple ink drawings he captures a Tokyo in the 1960’s the likes of which you’ve never seen and may not see anywhere else. There is very little dialog but the stories are very clear and often profound. You might want to flip through The Push Man just for the art.

There is a long afterward by Adrian Tomine, the author of Optic Nerve. Tomine describes reading some bootlegged comics by Tatsumi in his youth – and having read The Push Man and some early works by Tomine you can see the huge influence Tatsumi has had on Tomine’s work.

From the above, you might think that The Push Man is an awesome book that you should buy immediately. But consider this: The Push Man has more dead babies per page (on average) than any other book I have ever read. The number of abandoned baby corpses per page is staggering. The majority of the dead babies are in one story about men working to keep the sewers unclogged. Tiny bundles float by and one worker collects silver crosses from them. He explains to his coworker that women put these crosses on their babies to help them along in the afterlife. A wide shot in the next panel shows a dozen bundles floating by. Afterwards I read A Patch of Dreams, wherein abortion is legal in Japan, and I couldn’t help but consider how much cleaner their sewers must be.

There is only one word to describe The Push Man, and that word is maudlin. Every story is so stark and depressing that it goes through depressing and back into humorous again. I found I had to laugh at the end of each chapter, and I felt bad for laughing, kind of like my experience watching Todd Solond’z film Happiness, except it was harder to tell where The Push Man was supposed to be funny.

Although The Push Man is an excellent book, it is not a book I can recommend to anyone. I’m still haunted and disturbed by some of the short stories. A sequel, called Abandon the Old in Tokyo recently came out. I don’t know if I can bring myself to read it.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

By Guy Delisle
Drawn and Quarterly

Who would like this book: Everyone.
Who would hate this book: Communists and fascists.

Alright, so this isn’t manga. It’s not even “Global Manga” or OEL. But Pyongyang is the most important book I’ve read this year. It’s a book everyone should read. Besides, I’m reviewing one or two other Drawn & Quarterly titles here, so I might as well throw this in.

Pyongyang is an autobiographical story of an animator who is sent to North Korea to be the overseas supervisor on a low-budget French cartoon. This is a topic I can identify with, as I work in animation, and I recently visited South Korea and met the overseas supervisor of the cartoon show that I work on. Most American cartoons (Spongebob, the Simpsons, everything on Cartoon Network) are animated in Seoul, South Korea. But in recent years South Korea has become more expensive to outsource to, leaving companies reaching out to even cheaper labor forces in India and China. It’s worth noting that most Japanese anime is primarily animated in China. I can only imagine the show’s budget that gets shipped off to North Korea for completion! The French needed to find a place cheaper than Inia or China?

Guy Delisle smuggles a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 and a radio into North Korea – both illegal in a country where all forms of media are heavily censored by the government. I highly suggest reading 1984 before or in conjunction with Pyongyang, because if you haven’t read 1984 you will miss the terrific parallels between Orwell’s predictions and the stark reality of North Korea.

I can’t emphasize enough how Pyongyang is funny, and not at all preachy, and although there are politics, it doesn’t hit you over the head with a political message. Although the situation in North Korea is very depressing, Delisle’s portrait of it is not depressing to read. If the book were preachy or depressing, I wouldn’t have been able to finish it.

In one scene, Delisle is listening to music while he does his work in the animation studio. One of his coworkers closes the door to his office several times. Finally he explains angrily to Delisle, “Your music could influence people!”

The only music played on the three radio stations in Pyongyang are propaganda nationalistic anthems about Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Delisle asks his coworkers if they have ever heard of reggae or disco or rap or rock – they have not. A “rave” is something that North Koreans cannot imagine. It’s a simple scene and it is handled humorously, but it had a profound effect on me. For weeks afterwards I considered the simple freedom of being able to listen to the music of my choice.

As soon as I finished reading Pyongyang I began loaning it to my coworkers in the animation studio where I work. Everyone loved it. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Sexy Voice and Robo

By Iou Koroda
Viz

Who would like this book: Almost anyone.
Who would hate this book: Readers who missed the underlying theme because they were looking for a little less talk and a lot more action.

Nico (codename “Sexy Voice”) is a phone sex operator, although most of the people who call her tele-club are just lonely men looking to talk to someone. Although Nico seems much older, the back cover claims that she is 14. Nico’s part time job has given her several skills, including the ability to recognize a voice in a crowd and a talent for manipulating lonely men.

Nico meets a nerdy 20-something whom she nicknames Robo after his robot toy collection. Not exactly friends, and definitely not lovers, Nico and Robo’s relationship is in a state of flux throughout the story. Is Robo Nico’s employee? Her henchman? Her bodyguard? He’s not really sure and he’s too embarrassed to ask.

Nico is resourceful, energetic, talented, and intelligent. She’s as spunky and fiercely independent as any female protagonist you could hope for. Robo is there for contrast – he is drifting aimlessly through life while Nico sails ahead. When asked what she wants to do with her life, Nico responds that she’d like to be a secret agent, a spy, or a fortuneteller.

She sets herself onto this career path during the course of the book when she starts getting work from a mob boss. Nico becomes an unlikely junior detective, completing missions with Robo’s help. At the climax of the book Nico meets an old woman who was once a spy. They exchange the following dialog:

Nico: Why did you become a spy?
Old Woman: I was good with languages and I wasn’t very pretty.
Nico: No, I mean, did you want to be a spy?
Old Woman: I heard from a classmate that they needed translators… I did it because I could.
Nico: But was it something you wanted? Are you glad you did it?
Old Woman: Well… Sometimes it’s your skills… and not your will, that sets you on your path.

This last line is as good career advice as any I have ever heard, and it has certainly proved true in my own career so far. The line is devoted an entire splash page of Nico’s face, in a book where splash pages are rare.

The art of Sexy Voice and Robo is very different from normal manga. The line strength is very dark and sketchy. It almost looks as if the book was drawn with a brush-pen in thick strokes.

In Japan Sexy Voice and Robo was released as two volumes, but Viz has collected both tankoban into one oversized volume. The cover price is $20, but it is well worth the cost. The print quality is good but the paper stock is not the highest quality. Sexy Voice and Robo won the Grand Prize from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Media Arts Festival in 2002, and the MangaCast nominated it for the first ever annual Yomi award in 2005 for Best Short.

Boy Princess, Vol. 1

By Seyong Kim
NETCOMICS

Who Would Like This Book: Yaoi fans? Shounen-ai fans? I’m not exactly sure. Am I a yaoi fan? This book didn’t lead me to any strong conclusions about my yaoi fandom one way or another.

Who Would Hate It: People not interested in yaoi.

Boy Princess, not to be confused with Princess Prince or Princess Princess, is a Korean manhua shounen-ai title being released in North America by Netcomics. There’s no real nudity, and the age rating is an appropriate 13+.

In the first few pages, the story hits the ground running. Prince Nicole is the youngest son in a small medevil kingdom of some unspecified European-looking country. Nicole’s sister has run away instead of being married to a neighboring country’s prince in a political marriage. Nicole is forced to cross-dress and take his sister’s place. And all of this happens in the first three or four pages. Prince Nicole finds himself married and living as a woman in another kingdom before chapter one is half-way over. Fortunately it doesn’t turn into some kind of Madame Butterfly affair; the prince realizes almost immediately that Nicole is a guy. Instead of divorcing or killing Nicole, Prince Jed, decides to let him continue living in his kingdom as his wife.

If this were Shakespeare, a chick would fall for cross-dressing Nicole and he would be unable to return her affections until the end of the play. Shakespeare would also throw in some twins, some more cross dressing, and maybe a sea monster. But this isn’t Shakespeare, it’s yaoi. So it’s no surprise when Nicole starts to fall for Jed. They kiss a few times during the course of the volume one, but there’s always some bizarre set-up for it, like the kiss is the prize in a kingdom-wide tournament, or Jed’s men are bugging him to kiss the princess. So although Nicole and Jed have feelings for each other, none of their kisses ever really “count,” and they can’t seem to tell each other how they really feel.

Meanwhile, Prince Nicole must adjust to palace life as a chick. While Jed is out defending the realm Princess Nicole must deal with the drama of intrigue of castle politics – or in other words, he has to put up with bitchy female relatives being snarky to him. Apparently Nicole is considered lower than dirt in the royal family until (s)he can produce an heir to the crown. This is the most interesting part of the book, in my opinion. But Nicole doesn’t want to deal with this kind of female nonsense and royal court intrigue, so he goes to hang out with Prince Jed and his soldiers in the woods instead.

This isn’t exactly yaoi, it’s shounen-ai, or boy’s love. Ultimately I suppose the question is: Is it sexy? At this point, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that question. I preferred the more explicit Brother, which is actual yaoi. Boy Princess is funny enough and kind of sweet, and that might be the point of shounen-ai, a genre which I am not terribly familiar with.

The art is really interesting – the characters are drawn in bizarre proportions. Something about the length of their necks just isn’t right. The profile views are sometimes really freaky looking. Anatomy aside, many of the textures and costumes are really incredible. I often paused in my reading to look at the detailed tones and textures. There were enough backgrounds to suit my tastes, and the characters’ hair was all very long and detailed. The art is different, but I wouldn’t call it “hot”.

The characters’ names are kind of odd. “Jed” seems like a redneck name from an American point of view, and not so much a prince’s name. I suppose “Nicole” is gender-neutral, but mostly I’ve only met girls named Nicole, and I suppose that’s appropriate for this book, all things considered.

Overall I don’t have many complaints about Boy Princess. It’s alright, and it’s the first Korean yaoi/shounen-ai/whatever I’ve read, so it was interesting from that perspective. The story didn’t knock me out, and some of the characterizations could’ve been better. I might take a chance and read volume two.

Enchanter, Vol. 1

By Izumi Kawachi
Digital Manga Publishing

Who Would Like This Book: 13-15 year old boys, for whom ecchi is not (yet) a cliche.

Who Would Hate It: I didn’t haaaaaate this it, but I read it for free. If you paid the full cover price you might feel ripped off. $13 is a bit much for this generic tale of wizards…

Digital Manga was nice enough to rush me an advance copy of Enchanter with a note attached saying “Finally, a title that’s not yaoi!” I had to laugh – 90% of the books DMP have sent me so far have been yaoi, or at least “boy’s love”.

Enchanter is presented like the rest of DMP’s titles – they’re just a little bigger than the rest of your manga so they won’t fit on your shelves if you specifically sized-out your bookshelf to fit Viz and Tokyopop releases. Enchanter comes with a nice dust jack like Japanese books do, but is the dust jacket worth the extra $2 for the cover price? The printing is really nice, on quality paper. The sound effects are translated off to one side the way I like it. Overall, it’s an excellent presentation of a mediocre book.

Enchanter is the story of Haruhiko, a hapless high school student who’s in love with his teacher Yuka. Yuka also happens to be Haruhiko’s childhood friend and next-door-neighbor. She’s only four or five years older than Haruhiko, and perhaps more importantly she is both shy and totally hot.

Enter the demon who looks identical to Yuka, and goes by the name of Eurakanaria. Unlike Yuka, Eurakanaria has demon wings, wears a miniskirt, and has absolutely no shame. Eurakanaria breaks through some dimension wall and starts hanging out with Haruhiko because it turns out he’s identical to Fulcanelli, a very powerful enchanter who has lost his body and exists only as a soul contained in a jewel that Eurakanaria wears.

Eurakanaria wants to put Fulcanelli’s soul into Haruhiko’s body, and this makes up the main conflict of the manga. Naturally, there are demons who are out to get Fulcanelli, or maybe just eat his soul. And as luck would have it, if Haruhiko uses Fulcanelli’s “spirit energy” he can defeat the demons plaguing his school using something that looks like a light saber. It’s all very Bleach-like.

There are only two remarkable aspects of Enchanter; first, it’s pretty ecchi. Eurakanaria is often shaded in such a way that her leather shorts are so reflective that it looks as if she’s not wearing pants. Yuka’s bra is revealed during a demon fight seen in an erotic way. Characters randomly get water dumped on them for what must be a wet T-shirt contest in which you, the reader, are the judge.

Second, demons can only be hurt with magic weapons. This might be a standard manga thing, but it reminds me of the game of Dungeons and Dragons that I play with my friends. We often run into powerful enemies that can only be hurt with magic weapons, and it’s really annoying, because magic weapons are hard to come by in our campaign. My characters have had to sit out of many fights for lack of a magic weapon. Since Enchanter takes place in the real world, the lack of magical weapons is a problem, at least in the first volume.

In the second half Eurakanaria and Haruhiko meet an enchanter who is only a skeleton. He’s a pretty funny character – and a physician – but that’s not really enough to save an otherwise generic story.

Overall, Enchanter is well-drawn enough, but the plot is filled with cliches. The ecchi aspects only annoyed me. It’s rated 16+, but I think it’s too immature of a book for most 16-year-olds to enjoy. Even though it’s totally inappropriate (maybe because it’s totally inappropriate) I’d say that 13-15 year olds might get the most enjoyment out of Enchanter.

Life, Vol. 1

By Keiko Suenbu
Tokyopop

Who Would Like This Book: Mostly girls who like drama.

Who Would Hate It: If you’re not interested in melodrama, and only want to read light-hearted stuff, stay far away from this one.

I first heard about Life at the New York Comic Con, where someone high-up on Tokyopop’s staff described what it was about, and how when she heard they aquired the title, she sat down and read the first one – and immediately had to read the next four volumes. (I’m assuming she was reading them in Japanese.) Life is just that gripping of a story – I wish I could read the next four volumes as quickly!

Life is about cutters. Cutters, as described by the clinical psychologist who wrote the afterward, are people who cut themselves because they can’t control other kinds of pain in their life, and they don’t have any other coping strategies. Cutters are not suicidal, but they can injure themselves very badly at times if they cut too deep. They usually cut their arms and legs, and wear long sleeves and pants to cover up their habit.

Life is the story Ayumu, who becomes a cutter over the course of volume one. Ayumu is a junior high student who doesn’t have any friends at all beside her best friend Shii-chan. Shii-chan is a top student in their class, but Ayumu is kind of an idiot. When Ayumu learns that Shii-chan is going to try to get into an elite high school, Ayumu is terrified that she’ll be left alone and friendless in high school. So Ayumu decides to study hard and aim to get into the same high school as Shii-chan.

While studying late into the night Ayumu hears a story on the radio about an exam student stabbing herself with a mechanical pencil in order to stay awake. Ayumu gives it a try, but the mechanical pencil does nothing for her. She stabs herself with something sharper – and although it’s painful and terrifying, it wakes her up enough to keep studying all night long.

Soon Ayumu’s grades get better and better. So much so that she starts to pass Shii-chan. Then the worst thing possible happens; Ayumu manages to get into Shii-chan’s high school of choice, but Shii-chan fails the exam.

Even worse, Shii-chan takes it really hard. She blames Ayumu for her failure. If Shii-chan didn’t have to help Ayumu study, maybe she could have done better. Shii-chan and Ayumu have a heart-wrenching best friend break-up. Ayumu can’t deal with the pain of losing Shii-chan and going to high school alone, so she starts cutting herself even more.

Perhaps what’s most gut-wrenching about this friend break-up is that it’s obvious that Shii-chan wasn’t being a true friend to Ayumu. If she was really Ayumu’s friend she might’ve been angry when Ayumu started getting better grades, but she would’ve gotten over it if she honestly loved Ayumu as a person. It’s obvious from the way the story is told that Ayumu just doesn’t have any other friends, and Shii-chan, by default, is her best friend.

Things get worse as Ayumu enters her new school and makes friends Manami, a crazy chick who starts manipulating Ayumu right from the start. It’s obvious that Manami isn’t a true friend to Ayumu either, but Ayumu is too depressed to interact with the other students and too easily manipulated by Manami to know better.

It’s hard to describe Life in the equivalent of American storytelling. Life doesn’t play out like an after-school special or “a very special episode of Blossom”. The next-closest manga equivalent that I’ve read is Confidential Confessions, but those seemed more like after-school-special morality tales, where the kid doing drugs is obviously in the wrong and you should clearly Go To A Parent, Teacher, or Another Trusted Adult To Help Your Sick Friend. There is no such moral in Life. The plot simply forges ahead, at times melodramatically. Only Tokyopop’s provided epilogue tells you how to find help if you or someone you you know is a cutter. They provide a few links to look up for further reading.

On one hand I kind of respect that there is no obvious moral to the book. The reader is presented with Ayumu’s problems in a sympathetic and straight-forward way. There are no easy answers to Ayumu’s pain, and it’s heartbreaking to read. It’s also really gross when there’s a gory close-up of Ayumu cutting or stabbing herself. Unlike in normal manga when a demon gets cut in half or whathaveyou, you feel Ayumu’s pain. And Ayumu is no emo kid like Shinji from Evangelion – it’s obvious Ayumu would be a cheerful girl if her life didn’t suck (one can’t say the same for Shinji).

Life is a fast-paced, horrifying, gut-wrenching read. It’s fairly short and you can get through it all in one sitting. I’ll read volume two for sure – but it’s up to volume 12 in Japan. How can Ayumu keep cutting herself for 12 volumes? Does she meet a new screwed-up best friend in each volume? Maybe she should date that kid from Loveless…

Here’s a comic I drew of myself reading Life volume 1:

Pretty Maniacs, Vol. 1

By Shinsuke Kurihashi
DrMaster

Who Would Like This Book: Mostly me, but I might be a very small demographic.

Who Would Hate It: If you’re looking for a lot of realistic depictions of female manga fans, you’re not going to find them here.

Pretty Maniacs is the sequel to Maniac Road, which I’ve never read. It’s less of a sequel than it is a spin-off, so I didn’t feel lost after the first few pages. Pretty Maniacs is the story of Shinano, the little sister from Maniac Road. As Pretty Maniacs opens she inherits her school’s manga club. At first she’s thrilled when she’s informed that she will be the new president of the manga club, but she is perhaps less thrilled to find that she is the sole member of manga club.

She might not look like it from the outside, but Shinano is an otaku through and through. She knows more than she should for a high school freshman about old mech anime series and manga. The beautiful Otowa is introduced early on as a rival and more reluctant female otaku. Otowa and Shinano disagree on favorite mech series and favorite robots. They have a falling out and Shinano fails to recruit Otowa into the manga club.

Part-way through the book the school decides to cancel clubs that don’t do anything and clubs with too few members. The manga club is going to get the ax. Desperate to do something to save her club, Shinano decides to produce an amateur comic (doujinshi). The only trouble is that she can’t draw…

Enter Tateshi, an Art Club drop-out who’s secret desire is to draw manga!

By the end of the Pretty Maniacs volume 1 Shinano has recruited more members to the manga club and they’re off to sell their doujin at ComiFest. Sure, it’s a plot we’ve seen before in Comic Party and Genshiken, but it’s a plot I’m not tired of yet, and this is a newish spin on it. The manga club of Pretty Maniacs consists entirely of high school girls who don’t really know what they are getting themselves into.

And therein lies the weirdness of Pretty Maniacs. All of the girls in manga club, but particularly Shinano and Otowa are really cute. To the point that it’s kind of ridiculous. Usually no one that good-looking is a hardcore otaku. For more of a realistic look at what girl manga fans might look like, check out High School Girls volume five. It’s a cute fantasy on the part of the author that adorable high school girls might be selling their adorable first comic at ComiFest, but the reality of the nerds in attendance is much closer to Genshiken. I’ve seen pictures.

I really enjoyed the art of Pretty Maniacs. There’s something about the way that the book is inked that is visually intriguing. There isn’t too much tone. There’s something about the way the hair is drawn that’s different from most manga and it comes as a refreshing change of style. The panels are laid out in a very squared-off way, more like an American indy comic, although not to the extreme of Love Roma. I’m almost tempted to say that Pretty Maniacs looks like it might be some kind of doujin, or it’s by an author who started off drawing doujinshi, but I don’t really know enough to be able to say that definitively.

Like many DrMaster books, Pretty Maniacs is a little smaller than average manga size. The cover price is $10. The sound effects are translated just off to one side similar to how Del Ray does it. The paper quality is a little crappy, but not as crappy as the $8 Viz releases.

What really carried me through this story was the energy of all of the characters – particularly Shinano’s spasticness. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, and I’ll probably check out volume two and read Maniac Road as well, if only because I like the author’s unique visual style.