Manga Minis, 8/8/08

In an effort to keep things fresh and cover more titles, we’re converting Manga Minis from a monthly to a weekly column. Expect an eclectic assortment of capsule reviews every Friday, along with our customary mix of longer reviews, con coverage, and recurring features throughout the week.

This week, we tackle four new titles: volume five of The Antique Gift Shop (Yen Press), a Korean import with a supernatural vibe; volume one of Classical Medley (CMX), a shonen romp in which the characters have musically inspired names; volume four of Her Majesty’s Dog (Go! Comi), a shojo romance with a demonic twist; and volume two of Hollow Fields (Seven Seas), Madeleine Rosca’s award-winning OEL series.

The Antique Gift Shop, Vol. 5

By Lee Eun
Yen Press, 200 pp.
Rating: Teen

The first four volumes of The Antique Gift Shop adhered to the same formula: unsuspecting customers purchase objects from a magical emporium, only to discover that said objects are possessed by spirits with agendas of their own, e.g. reuniting lost lovers, punishing bullies for bad behavior. Volume five is something of an anomaly, as the longer of the two stories is only tangentially connected to the shop. In it, a delivery man finds himself stranded at a compound whose gothic denizens shun the one seemingly normal resident, a curly-haired moppet with big, dewy eyes. Though Lee Eun channels Charles Addams’ iconic family with her marvelous character designs and atmospheric backgrounds, she has considerable difficulty with the actual storytelling. Each scene is weirdly self-contained, leading to a denouement that feels more like a bolt from the blue than the logical resolution of the story’s central mystery. The second chapter suffers from many of the same problems–disjointed storytelling, cryptic dialogue–but has a crucial advantage: it stars the proprietress of the gift shop, a character familiar from previous volumes. Her story is, at times, frightfully hard to follow–I think she plays a hand of go to save her mother’s soul–but I did learn a few fun facts about Korean playing cards, and and dug her opponents’ fabulous costumes, which struck me as something Cotton Mather might have worn after a visit to seventeenth century Korea.

The bottom line: the cover art is beautiful, but the interior is a mess. Wait for volume six or backtrack to the first volume if you’d been curious about this series.

–Reviewed by Katherine Dacey

Classical Medley, Vol. 1

By Sanae Kana
CMX, 162 pp.
Rating: Teen (T)

There are two magical orbs in the Classical Kingdom, one a ball of light and the other a sphere of darkness. The power of the latter has been sealed away since being abused by a king of yore, and a ceremony to renew the seal is required every 100 years. The ceremony goes wrong, and the current king winds up possessed by dark powers while Alto, protagonist of indeterminate gender and bodyguard to the prince, obtains the powers of light. Alto flees with Prince Soprano and trusty dragon companion Mezzo to seek help from Soprano’s brother, who is the only one not to have come under the king’s evil influence since he’s attending school in another country.

This title is rated Teen, but it’s hard to imagine any teen wanting to read this. The characters look and act younger than their established ages, the attempts at humor are not funny, and the story keeps getting modified as it goes along. I’d say it ought to be rated All Ages instead, but there are a few gratuitous images of the queen’s enormous boobs that might make that problematic.

Classical Medley is thoroughly mediocre, treading closely to the border with outright bad. I’m usually a completist, especially with a short series like this, but I couldn’t endure a second volume, even to know how it all ends.

–Reviewed by Michelle Smith

Her Majesty’s Dog

By Mick Takeuchi
Go! Comi, 196 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16+)

In my review of volume seven, I noted some similarities between Her Majesty’s Dog and InuYasha. In both series, for example, the heroine is a teenaged priestess/schoolgirl who pals around with a moody demon dog. Though the two series diverge plot-wise, they share another trait: the filler arc. Volume nine of Her Majesty’s Dog feels like one of those “Hey, let’s have InuYasha disrupt the cultural festival at Kagome’s school!” storylines that Rumiko Takahashi likes to insert between long, drawn-out quests for jewel chards. Nothing of consequence happens: Amane and Ateko quarrel and reconcile; Amane and Hyoue help a tree spirit cross over; the gang attend–you guessed it–a cultural festival.

Mick Takeuchi’s art hasn’t evolved much from the first volume. Her character designs and backgrounds are crisply rendered, if a little generic, while her indiscriminate use of screentone would vault her to the top of Dee DuPuy’s Most Wanted list. Takeuchi still struggles with action sequences; the few scenes involving koma-oni combat are a hot mess of diagonal panels, facial close-ups, and sound effects.

That said, fans of the series shouldn’t skip volume nine, as Amane “makes a shocking decision” (to borrow a phrase from the dust jacket) in its final pages–a decision with the potential to end her relationship with Hyoue for good and bring the series to a dramatic close.

–Reviewed by Katherine Dacey

Hollow Fields, Vol. 2

By Madeleine Rosca
Seven Seas
Rating: All Ages

One thing I can credit Hollow Fields with as a series: the main character does get more interesting. In the first volume, Lucy Snow showed severe growing pains at her new school, whining how it was too cold outside to dig up corpses, and fainting at the sight of vats full of genetically-engineered fish-birds and formaldehyde. Not only was she in danger of failing her first week and earning detention–which according to the rules at Hollow Fields, means being sent to the ominous windmill no student has ever returned from –worse, she was almost no fun. And attending a school for aspiring mad scientists should be fun, right?

In volume two, Lucy toughens up and shows potential in certain forbidden sciences. Unfortunately, she still comes across as bland compared to her classmates, especially Summer Polanski, who would be the star if this were a more subversive series. But it isn’t; writer/artist Madeleine Rosca seems content serving up a routine adventure plot, in which Lucy has to get out of Hollow Fields or something terrible will happen to her. Worse, Rosca doesn’t even let the suspense build until the next volume. Instead, just when the dark twists on academic competitiveness and pre-teen girl rivalries start to heat up, a major plot development takes place, and things take a turn towards more run-of-the-windmill stuff.

As a reader, I wanted more scenes like the mid-term exam, in which Lucy and her classmates unleash destructive class projects on a scale-model city. At least Rosca’s art, which combines cute, nose-less children with spooky-looking backgrounds, continues to make an interesting-looking combination. Now if only the story itself were as twisted as it looked.

– Review by Phil Guie