In these two volumes, Ash largely leaves the follow-up concerning Banana Fish to reporter Max Lobo and his colleague, Steve, and instead sets his sights on exacting bloody vengeance against Arthur, a former member of Ash’s gang who betrayed him. At first, it seems like two major events are going to complicate things for Ash—namely, that he’s the prime suspect in the arson at Dino Golzine’s mansion and that Dino has traded a sizable contribution to a politician’s campaign in exchange for legal custody of Ash.

Ash, however, neatly sidesteps both threats, executing a two-pronged financial attack against Dino and fooling the cops into thinking he’s the privileged son of a banker. This leaves Ash free to order a massacre, culminating in a riveting one-on-one (at least, it was supposed to be) fight between Ash and Arthur in a deserted subway station. Meanwhile, Ash attempts once again to get Eiji to return to Japan, though not before revealing some of his pain and vulnerability to him.

We see so many different sides of Ash in these volumes. When he’s alone with Eiji he allows himself to cry over what he’s become, sharing memories both painful and amusing (the pumpkin story!), and reveals that he never once wanted to be “exceptional.” Ash is too pragmatic to indulge in wishes, but one gets the sense that if he would let himself dream, he would want a quiet life where he’s free to be a kid, which is exactly what he gets by being with Eiji. There’s an extraordinarily touching scene where he simply needs Eiji’s presence so much that he asks him to stay with him a while, and Eiji, with a look of profound peace upon his face, replies, “Forever.”

Things can’t stay so calm, however. Eiji, confused by how Ash can sob into Eiji’s lap one moment and kill someone the next, takes issue with Ash’s cold-blooded vengeance. “Which is the real one? Or do they both exist side by side in you, without contradiction?” he thinks at one point, and he’s not even privy to the third side of Ash—the absolutely brilliant one who not only orchestrates the attack on Dino but is able to analyze the political situation prompting some high-ranking officials in the US government to employ Banana Fish for their own ends.

Simply describing some of these scenes is not doing them justice. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of an intelligent and wounded young man who is absolutely determined to survive the hand he’s been dealt, and conceals his hurt and insecurities under a veneer of coldness. Ash is prepared to send Eiji away because his friendship is dangerous to him, but if he succeeds he would also be sending away his one outlet, the one person in front of whom he doesn’t need to pretend to be okay. Ash is a broken badass and man, who would have thought I could love him more now than I did after volume six? And yet I do.

I only wish the art were better. It might just be me, but I do think that Ash is drawn much more handsomely now than in early volumes, and looks especially snazzy in his glasses and designer duds while posing as the rich kid. Unfortunately, black characters still look pretty awful, though one new black character—Cain, the leader of a neutral gang—is a great new addition to the cast. I hope he sticks around. Too, a lot of times characters shown in profile look like they have pillows shoved up under their shirts. What is up with that?

It’s always hard not to continue to the next volume when I get to the end of an installment of Banana Fish, but this was harder than most. Still, I don’t want to get too far ahead of the roundable discussion, which you should keep an eye out for at Manga Bookshelf.

I reviewed the omnibus edition of this shoujo manga based on the Darker Than Black anime for Comics Should Be Good. Basically, all of the elements borrowed from the anime are pretty intriguing, but the manga’s storyline just doesn’t hang together very well.

You can find that review here.

Darker Than Black is published in English by Yen Press in a 384-page omnibus edition that contains both volumes of the series.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

From the back cover:
After orphan Teru Kurebayashi loses her beloved older brother, she finds solace in the messages she exchanges with DAISY, an enigmatic figure who can only be reached through the cell phone her brother left her. Meanwhile, mysterious Tasuku Kurosaki always seems to be around whenever Teru needs help. Could DAISY be a lot closer than Teru thinks?

One day at school, Teru accidentally breaks a window and agrees to pay for it by helping Kurosaki with chores around school. Kurosaki is an impossible taskmaster, though, and he also seems to be hiding something important from Teru…

Review:
Dengeki Daisy, from the creator of the charming Beast Master, is the latest series to debut under VIZ’s Shojo Beat imprint. It’s the story of orphan Teru Kurebayashi, whose older brother recently passed away, but not before giving her a cell phone that will enable her to contact “Daisy,” who will always be there to protect Teru in her brother’s place.

Due to her status as a scholarship student, Teru faces bullying at school, but pretends like everything is fine when text messaging Daisy. Little does she know that Tasuku Kurosaki, the delinquent school custodian, is actually Daisy and has been watching over her all this time. When Teru accidentally breaks a window at school, Kurosaki uses it as an excuse to keep an eye on her while he plays mahjong on his laptop and she does all the work.

There are definitely some familiar elements to this story. You’ve got the impoverished heroine being called a pauper, the all-powerful student council, and the somewhat-jerky-but-really-kind male lead. What makes Dengeki Daisy stand out from the pack are the original twists Kyousuke Motomi employs. Student-teacher romances are fairly common, but I’ve never seen a student-custodian one before. I like that Kurosaki is in love, but Teru is oblivious (though she does suspect right away that he might be Daisy, which he denies). And I genuinely like the characters and the way they interact, especially Teru’s group of misfit friends and the scene in which Kurosaki wields an edger as a weapon!

I really don’t have any complaints about this volume—it’s light, cute fun—but I can see how Kurosaki’s protectiveness and occasional dispeasure with Teru’s actions could possibly be viewed as patronizing. It honestly didn’t come across this way to me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if others took issue with it.

All in all, I really enjoyed this debut and am looking forward to continuing the series. Thanks, VIZ, for bringing us something else from this talented mangaka!

Volume one of Dengeki Daisy is available now. The series is still ongoing in Japan—volume seven will be coming out there in a couple of weeks.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

Cut for spoilers!

Read more…

I’ve always been intrigued by Ash Lynx, the lead character in Banana Fish, but suddenly I feel like I understand him so much better after reading these two volumes.

We begin with Ash and friends still in Los Angeles at the home of Dr. Alexis Dawson, one of the creators of Banana Fish. When Ash and Max are drawn away by a threat against Max’s family, Chinese mafia member Yut-Lung exorcises his influence over Ash’s friend, Shorter, and kidnaps Eiji, taking him back to New York to become Papa Golzine’s new plaything. Of course, the beautiful Yut-Lung is immediately turned into a tool by his own brother, who sends him as a gift for Golzine with the expectation that he’ll also act as spy.

Ash is captured soon thereafter—though not before Alexis Dawson can conveniently return and explain all about the origins of Banana Fish—and everyone reunites at Golzine’s mansion, where the true capabilities of the drug are demonstrated when Shorter, under the influence of Banana Fish, is compelled to attack Eiji, which in turn causes Ash to kill one friend to save another. Yut-Lung, once he sees how horrible Banana Fish truly is, helps Ash escape, leading to an incredibly awesome sequence where Ash raids the armory, gets Eiji and the others to safety, then returns for Shorter’s body and vengeance upon Dr. Abraham Dawson.

There’s really a ton of plot in these two volumes but what stands out to me the most are some amazing scenes involving Ash. I love, for example, how he cries over Shorter’s fate and in sympathy for what’s happening (or going to happen) to those he cares about. It really shows that, though he’s tough and brilliant, and has suffered and been mistreated, he’s not too damaged to love others. I love that so much of what he feels for Eiji is conveyed in simple looks, because there’s not enough time for words. I love that he looks a little confused that Eiji values him so much. And I love how he ignores the pleading of Abraham Dawson and simply empties his gun into the man who is, in a way, ultimately responsible for much of the misery that is Ash’s life.

It’s pretty impressive that Yoshida is not only able to show more facets of her lead character, but also move the plot along significantly, resolving the mystery of Banana Fish, setting up some of its possible ramifications, and blowing wide the scope of the story by showing that the White House and the US military are in cahoots with Papa Golzine.

It seems that the story is going to get a lot bigger than I was expecting—Ash versus the government?—but like his gang, with whom he’s finally reunited, I have faith that he’s going to survive, one way or another.

Much as with Natsuki Takaya’s Tsubasa: Those with Wings, I had been looking forward to the English release of Portrait of M & N by Tachibana Higuchi only because I enjoy later work, Gakuen Alice. Aaaand, much as with Tsubasa: Those with Wings, I ended up somewhat disappointed.

Portrait of M & N is a love story starring a beautiful girl named Mitsuru Abe and a handsome boy named Natsuhiko Amakusa. Matters are complicated, however, because each character harbors an embarrassing secret: Mitsuru is a masochist (or M) and Natsuhiko is a narcissist (or N). Ostensibly, these conditions developed as a result of the way they were treated by their parents—the most attention Mitsuru received from her mother was when she was being punished, while sickly Natsuhiko was forbidden to go outside and play with other kids, and thus developed a fixation for his own reflection.

Both Mitsuru and Natsuhiko are hoping for a normal, peaceful high school life, and things seem to be off to a good start because their good looks have attracted positive notice from their classmates. That is, until Mitsuru’s masochistic tendencies are triggered in Natsuhiko’s presence. It’s almost as if she has a split personality: when she is hit in the face, she suddenly becomes aggressively submissive, offering anybody who happens to be nearby the chance to do whatever they want to her. Against his better judgment, Natsuhiko becomes friends with Mitsuru and attempts to protect her whenever she goes into M mode, and thus reveals his own secret to her, one that turns him into a tearful, blushing fool whenever he catches sight of himself in a mirror.

If you’re looking for an accurate, sensitive portrayal of masochism or narcissism, you’re not going to find it here. This is a comedy, after all, and Higuchi seemingly delights in inventing ridiculous situations for the characters to endure—like a mandatory game of dodgeball, for example. A third character, Hijiri, enters the mix in toward the end of the first volume and, realizing Mitsuru’s secret pretty quickly, uses it to extract her cooperation in protecting him from a particular dog (he has a secret phobia of his own) on his way to and from school. Mitsuru’s closeness with two of the hottest guys in school does not go over well with the other girls, who treat her very poorly. These are the most tiresome scenes in the series, by far.

Setting aside the ridiculous and the tiresome, however, there really are some things I genuinely like about Portrait of M and N. Most of the time, a shoujo romance is presented from the girl’s point of view. She falls in love with the boy and we’re privy to her emotions, but we rarely, if ever, get inside his head. That is not the case here and, in fact, I believe there has been more attention paid to Natsuhiko’s developing feelings than Mitsuru’s.

As one bit of text reads, “She swiftly fell in love in spring, he realized he was falling in love in summer.” For Mitsuru, it was easy to fall in love with Natsuhiko, who is kind and understands her, but for Natsuhiko, the realization that he is falling in love with someone else is doubly important because it means that he can. All of his life, relatives and classmates have been vocal in their doubts that such a thing would ever be possible, but he has proved them wrong, and his happiness is mixed with not a little relief.

While I find Hijiri generally annoying, he is useful in that his interactions with Mitsuru force Natsuhiko to confront how he feels about her, and they end volume two by sharing an awkwardly cute moment together. It’s for scenes like these that I’ll continue to read Portrait of M & N and hope that there’s less to irk me in volumes to come.

Portrait of M & N is published by TOKYOPOP. The series is complete in Japan with six volumes, and two have been released in English so far.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

From the back cover:
Romance abounds as Uru’s life becomes entangled with all the men around her. A visit to the Takamura house by Shindo and Ichiro has Uru’s step-dad worried their lack of visible emotions may cause undue anxiety for his lovely daughter. But is that all he has to worry about? Later, a run-in with Uru has Sou Abekawa reevaluating his feelings for her, and things get complicated when Kenshi, the cousin with a crush on Uru, comes for a visit. How will Uru deal with all the mishaps coming her way?

Review:
After enjoying the laid-back comedy offered in the first volume of Happy Cafe, I was pretty disappointed when the second volume featured a rivalry between bakeries that had Uru on her most obnoxious behavior. Thankfully, the series’ third installment marks a return to the tone of the debut, with a variety of standalone episodes meant to show the sibling-esque bond between Uru and her two hot-but-strange coworkers.

The back cover would have one think that Uru is in a tizzy because of all these fellows with feelings for her, but honestly, she is completely oblivious. Sometimes a heroine’s cluelessness in such matters really annoys me, but with Uru, it’s more like her mind is simply completely on other things. It’s not that she wants these guys to like her and thinks that they don’t, it’s that she’s just not mentally in a place where romance is even a consideration. So, what we get is less a romantic comedy and more a series of vignettes in which Uru’s personality—and propensity to break out in sunny, heartfelt smiles—endears her to everyone around her.

That’s not to say there are no funny moments, though. My favorite is when step-dad is questioning Shindo and Uru, who live next door to one another. “Anything… unusually inappropriate going on?” he asks. “Such as neighbors getting intimate with other neighbors? Inappropriately?” I suspect some of what makes me giggle there has to do with the English adaptation, but it pleased me all the same.

I wasn’t really sold on Happy Cafe until this volume, but now I think I might have to see it through to the end simply because I like the characters and have found it in my heart to forgive them for brief interludes (volume two) during which they are annoying.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

When this series was wrapping up in Japan, I heard rumors about how it ended. Word was fans were peeved because, in the end, the heroine does not make a decision between the twin brothers for whom she has feelings. It turns out that this isn’t true, though author’s notes from Tanemura indicate that her original intention was for Haine to marry both boys and not just one. And yes, this is the kind of shojo that ends with a wedding.

As the conclusion approaches, all kinds of things happen that are probably supposed to be dramatic but just make me laugh. Haine confronts the twins’ grandfather about an archaic family tradition that establishes one as the heir and the other as mere stand-in, demonstrating her anger by ripping up a chair cushion. She then proceeds to talk down a gun-wielding friend by diagnosing his angst within three pages, gets shot anyway, narrates insipid dialogue like “Even if I’m mistaken… if what I make my mind up to do will lead to happiness then I can do it,” convinces gramps to acknowledge both twins, relays the good news to the boys, and then promptly collapses from her wound.

It’s all extremely silly, but there’s at least some enjoyment to be derived from watching all the clichés at play. Also, it seems that the art—though extravagantly toned as per usual—is a bit prettier in this volume. Perhaps Tanemura stepped it up a notch for the big finale.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

At some point in the near future, the national government of Japan passes the Media Betterment Act, which “seeks to exercise censorship over all media, including restricting offensive books.” Libraries are the only institutions able to oppose them, and so local governments build up armed forces to defend their libraries, which continue to preserve banned works in their collections and make them available to the people.

When Iku Kasahara was in her final year of high school, a member of the Library Forces intervened during a bookstore raid and prevented a beloved book from falling into the grasp of the Media Betterment Committee. The incident made a big impression on her and, after graduating from college, she enlists. As a new recruit, she must attend classes, complete grueling physical challenges, help out at the local library, and participate in woodsy training sessions.

While we see all of these scenarios play out in this introductory volume, the focus is really on Iku’s relationship with Dojo, her cranky commanding officer. To the reader, it is plainly obvious that he was the one who helped Iku in the bookstore that day, but Iku fails to connect him with her idealized prince. Because he pushes her harder than the other recruits—since he expects more of her—she thinks he hates her and is suspicious of his occasional kindness. For his part, Dojo is clearly smitten and impressed by Iku’s determination, even though her frequent intellectual lapses do try his patience.

Library Wars is a perfectly decent read, but it does have some issues. Firstly, the basic concept, as inherited by the series of light novels upon which the manga is based. If the national government has banned offensive books, why isn’t it going after the publishers of these books isntead of waiting until they’ve actually been printed to go confiscate them from bookstores? That doesn’t make much sense.

Secondly, the protagonist. I really appreciate that Iku is a physically coordinated heroine in her twenties, but wish that she wasn’t portrayed as such a scholastic ditz, forever sleeping in class and having to learn on the job what she was supposed to have learned in the classroom. I found myself sympathizing with Tezuka, her antagonistic fellow recruit, who is annoyed that such a slacker is able to achieve the same honor—a spot on an elite squad—that he was only able to attain through hard work.

Lastly, I am bothered by the inconsistency with which VIZ (presumably) has treated the characters’ ranks. Iku is first introduced as a Corporal, yet she is later identified as a Sergeant on a chart of characters and their positions and, indeed, the insignia on her uniform bears this out. Dojo, in turn, is called a Sergeant but according to the chart and his uniform, is actually a First Lieutenant. I know I shouldn’t let this sort of thing distract me from the story, but it’s a mistake that’s repeated so frequently I just couldn’t help it. Hopefully they’ll correct it for volume two.

I enjoyed Library Wars enough that I plan to continue with the series, though I doubt it’ll ever top my personal list of beloved books.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s this clumsy, kind-hearted girl who learns she’s really a princess and… Oh. You’ve stopped me.

When the female protagonist of a series is “a completely uncoordinated fourth grader,” you just know you’re dealing with a magical girl story. Fairy Navigator Runa is an unoriginal example of the genre, starring a clumsy but kind-hearted girl who learns that she is not only the princess of the fairy world but also possessed of a great power. Yawn.

Runa is resistant to this news at first, but when one friend—whose sole character trait is “the one who clutches a teddy bear”—is nearly struck by a car and another is captured by an evil ferret creature, Runa’s desire to protect her friends awakens her awesome ability to… send fairies back home. Yes, that is her amazing talent, and the inspiration for the manga’s title.

This manga is simply boring. It’s also full of cheesy dialogue like, “I am the one who holds the key to your destiny.” The only original elements are the creepy third eye on the back of Runa’s neck—such an uncute element is rare in this kind of tale—and Sae, the tomboyish best friend who looks at Runa in a very special way upon being rescued. Slashy!

There’s no shortage of magical girl manga out there, so if that’s what you’re after, it shouldn’t be hard to find one better than this.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.