This month, Michelle and I look at two very different titles: Blank Slate, a hard-boiled thriller that challenges our perception of what shojo is (well, not completely… all of the hand-to-hand combat is carried out by impossibly handsome men with perfect hair), and Captive Hearts, an early work by Vampire Knight creator Matsuri Hino.

Blank Slate, Vol. 1

By Aya Kanno
Viz, 192 pp.
Rating: Older Teen

Zen has no memory of the last twenty years, and doesn’t much care. The back cover, with its line “he can’t remember if he’s a killer or a hero,” erroneously leads one to anticipate a story of an amnesiac’s quest for identity. In reality, Blank Slate is all about the action.

The story takes place in the country of Amata, which was invaded and conquered in a war two decades earlier. The occupying government honors justice and order and employs a fleet of bounty hunters to eradicate all manner of undesirables. Zen is a notorious criminal and has committed every kind of crime imaginable. His philosophy is, “I do whatever I want. If it gets in my way, I smash it.”

I had a really tough time getting into the first chapter. It’s the stand-alone tale of a bounty hunter sent to kill Zen who instead joins him on a murderous spree of destruction and ruin. It wasn’t the best introduction to the setting or characters, and I found it very dull. The real serialization of the story commences in chapter two, and the improvement is immediate. From this point, there is a continuous plot focusing on the tensions between the native Amatans and the occupying Galayans and featuring kidnappings, prison breaks, and lots of guns. It’s pretty interesting, and I was surprised by several twists in the story.

Aside from the abundant bishonen, there’s nothing stereotypically shojo about Blank Slate. Zen is as heartless as they come and kills casually. Most of his victims are aggressors or authority figures, but he’s not above threatening the life of a child who could expose his hiding place. His companions are more sympathetic, particularly Hakka, a righteous doctor who has fallen into evil to protect something important to him.

The art style is visually clean, a necessity in a title like this where the story is enough to be puzzling over. Most of the character designs aren’t anything special, but Zen is really quite spectacularly pretty. This isn’t achieved through any gimmick of flowing hair or sparkly eye but simply with a beautifully drawn facial structure that’s quite stunning. I’ve reviewed a lot of manga, and never before have I devoted three full sentences to how pretty some guy is. Trust me on this.

Blank Slate certainly isn’t the best thing I’ve ever read, but the story it’s spinning is entertaining enough that I will surely be returning for the second and final volume due out in December.

–Reviewed by Michelle Smith

Captive Hearts, Vol. 1

By Matsuri Hino
Viz, 200 pp.
Rating: Teen

If Kaori Yuki is the V.C. Andrews of manga, gleefully pushing the envelope with gothic tales of incest, matricide, and child abuse, then Matsuri Hino is the Stephanie Myers, flirting with taboo subjects and forbidden romances but never crossing the line. Hino’s characters declare their feelings through tears and even bite one another, but they never quite consummate their relationships, preferring to say rather than do risqué things. As a result, I often find Hino’s works both tepid and icky, an unsatisfactory stew of bland characters, stock situations, and unhealthy boy-girl dynamics with a smattering of supernatural elements to rationalize the characters’ behavior.

Captive Hearts, an early work, explores the forbidden romance between a servant and his master. The hero, Megumi Kurioishi, is the latest member of his family to feel the sting of an ancient curse that binds them to the wealthy Kogami clan. Whenever he locks eyes with his employer, Megumi transforms into a fawning man-servant (Hino’s term, not mine), showering her with compliments and tending to her most trivial needs. This being a shojo manga, Megumi’s employer isn’t a foul-tempered crone but a beautiful teenage girl who finds Megumi’s attentions both overwhelming and thrilling, making her wonder if it’s OK to fall in love with her butler.

Though there are some truly funny moments, Hino tests our patience with too many scenes of Megumi protecting (read: stalking) Suzuka from perceived threats (read: other boys). Hino also overplays the romance angle in the early pages; Megumi and Suzuka feel the first pangs of love so quickly it induces whiplash. The biggest failure of Captive Hearts, however, is the artwork. Yes, Hino draws terrific close-ups of her principle characters, especially when they’re choking back a tear or two. But her layouts are frequently dark and busy, with too many flowery backdrops, too many sound effects, and too many large, undifferentiated patches of gray cluttering the page.

The bottom line: Captive Hearts is too icky to succeed as a comedy, but isn’t lurid or trashy enough to be a guilty pleasure a la Godchild or Fairy Cube.

–Reviewed by Katherine Dacey