Fujoshi may be the only ones who leave the manga aisle feeling sated this week, as the majority of new titles are yaoi. This week’s only other noteworthy release is the eleventh volume of Ariyoshi Kyoko’s Swan (CMX). This glorious bit of old-school shojo tells the story of Masumi, a sixteen-year-old girl who aspires to become a prima ballerina. Through her fierce determination and innate grace, she wins the opportunity to study in Tokyo under the tutelage of a world-renown Bolshoi dancer. The artwork is a little dated—gotta love those vintage 70s collars and hairdos—but beautiful nonetheless. If someone in your household digs Sleeping Beauty (or is old enough to remember Nureyev and Baryshnikov in their primes), Swan is an indispensable addition to her library.

REVIEWED THIS WEEK:

• Gothic Sports, Vol. 2 (Tokyopop)
• I.N.V.U., Vol. 4 (Tokyopop)

SHIPPING THIS WEEK:

• Berserk, Vol. 19 (Dark Horse)
• Chinese Hero: Tales of the Blood Sword, Vol. 3 (DrMaster)
• Draw Your Own Manga: Honing Your Style (Graphic-Sha)
• Freefall Romance (DMP)
• Gold Digger Tangent #3 (Antarctic Press)
• Invisible Boy, Vol. 1 (DMP)
• Manic Love (DMP)
• Melted Love (DMP)
• Star (DMP)
• Swan, Vol. 11 (CMX)
• Tower of the Future, Vol. 8 (CMX)

Gothic Sports, Vol. 2

By Anike Hage
Tokyopop, 179 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)

In the first volume of Gothic Sports we met Anya, a transfer student who arrives at Lucrece Academy with hoop dreams. Or net dreams—Anya doesn’t care which of the school’s many top-ranked teams she joins, so long as she has a chance to wear the Lucrece colors. Her efforts are frustrated both by her lack of skill and the school’s limited opportunities for female athletes. Anya refuses to be sidelined, however, and devises a plan to form a co-ed soccer team that will be notable both for its inclusiveness and its stylin’ uniforms. Volume two picks up right where the first one ended, with Anya’s newly assembled team facing their first opponents. The team’s future rides on the outcome of the match: if they win, the school will recognize them as a legitimate club; if they lose, they’ll be forced to disband and endure their classmates’ snickers. (No word on whether Nike will accept returns on their lace-trimmed hoodies.)

The strengths and weakness of this series come into sharper focus in volume two. Anike Hage wins points for employing a clean, unfussy style; for creating appealing female characters; and for injecting notes of realism into what is, essentially, a stock sports fantasy. But she fumbles the pace—the match lasts for most of the volume, stopping the story’s momentum dead in its tracks—and the character designs. Hage differentiates her cast members via the “ethnic Barbie” technique, using the same basic template for everyone regardless of heritage. (Like many sequential artists, Hage doesn’t seem to have grasped that representing racial difference is more than a matter of screen tone.) That said, there’s a lot to like about the series’ grrrrrl power message, so I’ll probably tune in next quarter to see if Hage recovers from her unforced errors.

Volume two of Gothic Sports is available now.

I.N.V.U., Vol. 4

By Kim Kang Won
Tokyopop, 192 pp.
Rating: Teen (13+)

Take away Gossip Girl’s crude language and heavy petting and what’s left would look a lot like I.N.V.U., a Korean series now back in production after a three-year hiatus. Like Gossip Girl, I.N.V.U. is a soap opera about beautiful young people with problems. There’s Sey, a fifteen-year-old whose boozy mother decamps to Italy to write a novel; Hali, a classmate whose amnesiac mother has mistaken Hali for her dead brother; Jae Eun, an aspiring yaoi artist; Mr. Cho, a smokin’ science teacher; Siho, a rollerblading juvenile delinquent; and Simon, a hottie who could pass for an employee of the Antique Bakery.

As you might guess from the cast’s boy-girl symmetry, most of I.N.V.U. is devoted to the romantic travails of its principal sextet. It’s the kind of series that serves up cliché subplots with a straight face, that posits a world in which smart girls date bad boys, and that makes it seem like breaking into the entertainment industry is as easy as passing Home Ec. I’m a little too old to find this type of soap opera engaging, but if I were thirteen, I.N.V.U. would be my platonic ideal of summer camp or slumber party reading.

Volume four of I.N.V.U. is available now.