This wasn’t planned, but we’ve mostly got Del Rey titles on tap for this week. First off is Michelle’s review of the long-awaited tenth volume of Ghost Hunt, then Connie takes a look at the seventh volume of Le Chevalier d’Eon, and Phil checks out volume twelve of School Rumble. Finishing things off, with a title not from Del Rey, is Michelle’s take on the BL story collection Unsophisticated and Rude (DMP).
By Fuyumi Ono and Shiho Inada
Del Rey, 208 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)
Osashiburi, Ghost Hunt! When last we left off, Naru, the head of Shibuya Psychic Research, was hospitalized after revealing a glimpse of his mysterious and dangerous powers. As volume ten begins, Naru has checked himself out of the hospital and seems to be back to normal, but on the way home he begins acting strangely, setting up camp in a rural village and ordering divers to dredge the nearby lake. Gradually, some information about Naru’s past comes to light and he reveals that the whole reason he created SPR in the first place was to find this spot. While awaiting the divers’ results, the team is commissioned by the town’s mayor to check out rumors of spirits haunting an abandoned elementary school. It turns out the job is a lot more dangerous than they were led to believe and the volume ends on a gigantic cliffhanger with the team trapped and the fates of two characters uncertain.
What Ghost Hunt does best, when it’s at the top of its game, is evoke an atmosphere of delicious creepiness. After a bit of a sputtering start, this volume settles into a nicely spooky groove. The nature of Naru’s search is marvelously macabre, and the scenes in which the team explores the rickety remains of the school are full of tense moments and grisly discoveries. On top of this, Mai has begun to realize that she doesn’t know enough about her colleagues to be able to call them friends, and so takes some welcome steps towards remedying that. Unfortunately, what Ghost Hunt does worst—achieving and maintaining consistency in character designs—is still a problem, but one to which I’ve simply become resigned.
Who knows when we’ll see volume eleven here—it just came out in Japan a little over a month ago—but the quality of volume ten assures me it’ll be well worth the wait.
Volume ten of Ghost Hunt is available now.
–Reviewed by Michelle Smith
Story By Tou Ubukata, Manga By Kiriko Yumeji
Del Rey, 193 pp.
Rating: OT (Ages 16+)
Two very important things happen in this volume. One is that Princess Sophie’s poems are dealt with in an unusual and extreme way by someone desperate but not involved with the poets. The other is that Lia fights another tricky, high-ranking poet when he threatens Sophie’s life and tries to steal her poems.
I am pretty fond of this series. For a manga adaptation of an anime, it is far better than one would expect, and the heavy, detailed art is always nice to look at. There are two things that stop Le Chevalier d’Eon from being an absolutely wonderful series, though, and both are present in this volume. One is the main fighting mechanic, the heavy-handed poetry itself. I’ve always liked the extremely intricate and varied word combat system in this series, but it’s always more than I’d like to deal with when a poet can’t be beaten because he’s “risen above sin” (he’s using the sin words to bind the characters here) and the characters have to figure out where he is “in his garden” in order to beat him. I have no idea what that means, and it almost never makes much sense, but it’s always fun to watch anyway.
The second thing is that the volumes move quickly, but more often than not the majority of the time in each volume is spent at a fight, and as a result the plot is moving along extremely slowly. There usually is something major that happens in each volume (Lia ascending the poet ranks, more allies, Sophie’s fate in this volume), but generally the fights are more important. As fun as those battles are, I’m always a little disappointed when the story is given so little emphasis.
Volume seven of Le Chevalier d’Eon is available now.
–Reviewed by Connie C.
By Jin Kobayashi
Del Rey, 165 pp.
Rating: T (Ages 13+)
If I had any real complaint, it would be the three characters on the cover, whose purpose I remain entirely unsure of. One of them appears in the story, but maybe not the other two? Also, having never read any School Rumble before, I was expecting a juvenile delinquent-oriented manga based on the frontispiece—the kind of thing Cromartie High School would satirize. So imagine my surprise when I got a zany romance-comedy manga instead.
But it’s a fun read, fast-paced and well-drawn, featuring an ensemble cast of characters, some more distinguishable than others. Each protagonist is part of a larger web of romantic entanglement, which can generally be boiled down to: Character A is enamored with Character B, who is in love with Character C; meanwhile, Character D in love with A, who is, of course, oblivious. Lest the series be accused of a lack of ambition, there is more than one love triangle/quadrangle at work, linked by an aspiring manga artist named Harima who haplessly stumbles from one to the other.
It’s tough to say based on just one volume, but I think School Rumble would appeal to romance-comedy audiences, as well as fans of self-referential manga. There is a plotline involving 120 pages Harima must draw, but the book gradually meanders to scenes of slapstick comedy, mistaken identity and general cluelessness. The broadly comedic tone is well-served by what occasionally seems like a mesh of artistic styles: one character is depicted in a gritty, heavily-shaded manner, while the princesses look hyper-feminine. That such different individuals could have any interest in one another only underscores the title’s theme that love is unpredictable, whether it’s the youthful type or otherwise.
Volume twelve of School Rumble is available now.
–Reviewed by Phil Guie
By Momoko Tenzen
Digital Manga Publishing, 190 pp.
Rating: Mature (18+)
Unsophisticated and Rude is a collection of five boys’ love tales from Momoko Tenzen. Unlike most compilations in this format, all of the stories are enjoyable and demonstrate an impressive ability to establish unique and compelling characters within a limited number of pages.
The first two stories—“Unsophisticated and Rude” and “Pretender”—are the best, offering additional dramatic complications beyond what’s generally expected with stories of this type. In the title story, Hiroto is surprised when his childhood friend, Satoshi, confesses that he has feelings for a male upperclassman. Hiroto pledges his support, but secretly possesses feelings for the same guy. While he cares for Satoshi and wants things to work out for his friend, he can’t help being jealous and, in the end, makes the difficult choice to seize love while he can. In “Pretender,” Katase has attempted to forestall his friend Manaka’s love confession by going out with a girl, to no avail. He’s very conscious of the stigma surrounding homosexuality, and resists engaging in a relationship, worrying that Manaka “isn’t really like me.”
My one real complaint is that, because of the inherent constraints of a short story, some things are not shown that I’d like to see. Particularly in the title story, readers are left wondering how Hiroto’s decision to choose love over his best friend will affect his life. Then again, perhaps it’s better to leave the undoubtedly painful implosion of their friendship to one’s imagination.
Unsophisticated and Rude is available now.
–Reviewed by Michelle Smith
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