By Sou Sagara and Okomeken. Released in Japan as “Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko” by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Digital Manga Publishing.

I was a bit ‘meh’ about the first volume of Stony Cat, which I felt showed promise but also had several flaws. The second volume is for the most part better, even though it has many of the same flaws, because the flaws are starting to look like they’re built into the work as a whole. This is not a manga about easy fixes – its very premise shows off the dangers of trying to fix your personality quirks with mere wishes – and we delve deeper into that here, as Yoto’s attempt to cheer Azusa up fail on a spectacular level, partly due to his being unable to avoid telling the truth but mostly due to his misconception about how deep her issues run.

There is a certain awkwardness that permeates the entire volume – indeed, the adaptation helps it along with some translation quirks that I’m not certain are deliberate. Azusa’s two old ‘friends’ from middle school, in the aftermath of the botched ‘date’, speak in a sort of stilted robotic tone, ending everything in ‘I did’ or ‘we did’. Indeed, everyone seems to talk a bit more formally in this series. It’s likely just a case of ‘how can I deal with this regional dialect’, but it helps to add an additional disconnect to what’s going on in the series.

Azusa is merely the most obvious example of someone whose ruined self-image is causing great pain in her life (even her mother, who seems to be one of those standard ditzy anime moms, is not really helping her). Tsukiko is pretty unhappy with Yuto’s plan, but of course can barely express it thanks to her wished-for stoicism (unlike Yuto, who is able to get his wish reversed halfway through this book, she’s still stuck with her face being the way it is.) Yuto himself is the typical well-meaning but overzealous teen guy, deciding that he knows how to fix things without really thinking about how they’ll affect the person he’s trying to fix. Getting his ability to lie back allows him to defuse things with Tsukiko’s sister (who turns out to be the “Iron King” track star we saw in Vol. 1), but I suspect his basic personality flaws will continue to plague him.

Aside from that, this series has most of what you’d expect from a harem romance based on a light novel that runs in Comic Alive. There’s lots of comedic violence, misunderstandings, some blatant nudity at the end of the book. The aforementioned Iron King gets to show off her physical prowess, but also shows off how little she understands the human brain (similar to the rest of the cast) when she accepts Yoto’s ‘that was my evil twin brother’ story at face value. Despite the added depth revealed in this volume, it’s still filled with flaws, and I wouldn’t recommend it except to those who like its genre to begin with. But for those people, there’s things to like here, or at least things to muse upon in the hope that future volumes will run with them further.

By Sou Sagara and Okomeken. Released in Japan as “Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko” by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Digital Manga Publishing.

I must admit I was rather surprised to see a title from Comic Alive licensed by someone other than Seven Seas, and had to double check to make sure that this wasn’t BL-related in some way. (Not that Comic Alive would go anywhere near BL.) But no, DMP is dipping their toe in this market, and doing so with a title that seems a bit more low-key than what we’ve seen from other Comic Alive titles released in North America lately, even if it does have the same basic storyline and outlook.

The story stars Yoto, a typical teenage boy who spends most of his days trying to look at girls’ panties (OK, a typical Japanese teenage boy). He’s very good at denying he’s doing anything wrong, and fate seems to love him, as whenever he’s caught perving it gets mistaken for him doing something noble. He’s still bothered by this, however, being a decent pervert at heart, and wishes he could be more honest. Then he hears about a cat statue that grants wishes, and it seems to work nicely on his best friend. So he goes to visit it, and promptly runs into an embarrassed, panicky girl who also wants to wish on the cat statue – she wants to make it so her feelings aren’t so visible. Unfortunately, they both get their wishes – he now can’t tell a lie at all, even to save his getting beaten up, and she’s a perfect stoic on the outside, no matter what she may be feeling.

Wackiness, as they say, ensues. As you can see by my taking a paragraph to write out the plot, there’s not much to this. The two leads quickly realize how horrific this has become, but of course they can’t take their wishes back so easily. And things are livened up by your typical moe manga archetypes in the supporting cast. Yoto and Tsukiko are already cliched types (heck, Tsukiko manages to be two in one, as we see her both as the stressed out over-emotional girl *and* the stoic), and they’re joined by a busty track star who’s queen of the school and a blonde tsundere princess who finds her match in Yoto’s new blunt and straightforward persona. A light-hearted harem manga ensues.

I have not been all that fond of Comic Alive titles recently. I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother! and Haganai both tended to irritate more than amuse me, mostly because I prefer my moe to be relaxed and soft rather than hyperactive and angry. But this wasn’t quite as bad as those two. The lead was just a shade more sympathetic, the tsundere had a bit more dimension to her, the plot invited antics while still being interesting. Yes, there’s still lots of talk of breasts and panties, and the plot is a simple ‘role reversal’ type thing we’ve seen before in, say, Your and My Secret, but this ended up being OK. I’d recommend it, but DMP hasn’t put Volume 2 on their upcoming list for 2013 (after they return from print hiatus), meaning we won’t see a new volume, if we do at all, for over a year. Thus, I can’t actually recommend it that much. But it’s not too bad.