By Banri Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Sekai De Ichiban Daikirai!” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by CMX.

This is the volume where I really began to get addicted to this manga. It’s also the one where Hidaka-san relaxes and starts to stretch out. At 3 volumes, it’s clear now that this is going to be much longer than all her previous stories featuring the Akiyoshi Family. So she can begin to introduce subplots and pace herself.

One note about the glaring weakness of this volume: the cover. Hakusensha’s covers for Hana to Yume books can be… well, dull. But you can do a lot with them if you try – look at V.B. Rose from Tokyopop, or even the later Tears of a Lamb from CMX. This one, however, reeks of clip ‘n paste. They get better.

Most of the drama in this volume comes from two plots: Kazuha’s angst about Maki, and his ‘giving her space’; and her family issues. Maki, in fact, is not really in this volume much at all, which might be frustrating for those who like to see a romantic shoujo manga actually feature the romantic couple. We do get some time with him, though, and it’s becoming clear that he’s getting over his initial ‘glomp’ affection and really falling deeper in love.

Kazuha, meanwhile, is a mess. I’ve talked before about her being an emotional roller coaster, but you really see it come into play here. She’s mopey, she’s happy, she’s angry, she’s stressed, she’s terrified… it can be exhausting. We do see her dealing with most of it, though, especially the family issues, which take priority over her love life. Chizuru’s ‘mid-life crisis’ (even if he’s only 14 years old) upsets her, but also widens her narrow viewpoint.

I love the fact that the Akiyoshi family features prominently in this, especially as it’s such a big family that we get multiple viewpoints. Kazuha realizing that the reason her mom and dad are never home is that there’s 6 of them and finances must be horrible; Momoka being almost a mini-Kazuha and getting upset at Chizuru for rebelling; and the three youngest just missing their dad, who was far more ‘parent-like’ when it was just her and Chizuru.

This leads to her deciding to get a job right out of high school (even though her teachers are telling her she has grades good enough for college). The manga actually presents this as a positive thing, showing her trying to think ahead, and realizing after watching Maki work and discussing the finer points with Arata that hairdresser might actually be a career for her.

And of course there’s the love permutations. Arata tries to be forceful, seeing that Maki is not doing anything at the moment, but Kazuha really doesn’t see him as anything but a friend, so that’s not going anywhere. Meanwhile, Senko is still wrestling with herself, trying to take delight in Kazuha and Maki’s angst but in reality just ending up worried about her friend.

This leads to Honjo, Arata’s older brother, who gets his role greatly expanded here. The author notes indicate he was pretty much immediately popular, and we can see why here. He’s the sensible one, the advice giver. He’s able to watch all the madness around him and not be sucked in by it. He genuinely seems to be trying to do right by Kazuha and Maki. He has a wicked sense of humor. And he’s just cool in general. He knows how to give enough advice so that people will understands what needs to be done without lecturing them. “You need to have some self-confidence, Akiyoshi. As long as you’re like that, he’s gonna be like that.”

Hidaka-san is starting to learn her craft, as well. There’s some lovely juxtaposition here. Page 66 featuring a happy beaming Kazuha with her two friends staring grumpily at her, contrasted with page 96, with miserable Kazuha drawn in almost the exact same style, with the grumpy friends having merely adjusted slightly. In addition, towards the end (after the fight about Chizuru getting his ear pierced), we see Kazuha running off to yell at Maki, while Senko confronts Honjo. We cut from Akiyoshi slapping Maki across the face… to Honjo, who has caught Senko’s hand before she could slap him. It’s a nice sign of growth.

I really feel this is where the series starts to get good. Yes, it’s still a bit scattered compared to her later works, but there’s a lot to love here. Recommended.

By Banri Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Sekai De Ichiban Daikirai!” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by CMX.

I Hate You More Than Anyone 2 continues to develop its various plotlines. We get more scenes with Kazuha’s brother Chizuru, and notice that there’s something troubling him that he can’t quite talk about with her. Well, he does try at one point, but Kazuha is so wrapped up in her own love issues that she doesn’t notice. Maki gets a ‘love rival’ as we meet Arata Honjo, who has fallen in love with Kazuha without actually meeting her. And Kazuha and Senko have definitely gone from rivals to best friends in this volume, which makes things even more difficult as they’re both after the same guy.

One thing that is both a strength and weakness of this manga is how you can really see the gears turning in Hidaka-san’s head, as she figures out where she wants to go with things. On the downside, if she had an outline it’s pretty clearly been crumpled up by now, as much of this reads as if she’s writing on the fly from week to week. (As I’ve noted earlier, those reading IHYMTA alongside V.B. Rose will note the difference between a beginner and a veteran.) On the upside, it lends an energy and verve to the title, which feels like it might careen out of control but never does so, mostly as we are following Kazuha’s exhausting mood swings.

Maki has settled down in this volume, realizing he went too far with the kiss at the end of Volume 1 and trying to pull back a bit. And now that Kazuha has admitted (to herself) her feelings for him, the title is not quite as accurate as it once could have been. I was also very amused at Arata Honjo’s intro, as he’s clearly set up to be the other guy who won’t get anywhere, but the author is aware of it; everyone enjoys pointing out in this series how pointless his crush on Kazuha is. And, naturally, we get him fondling her as he tries to tell by her small chest if she’s really a girl. Good to see some manga classics never get old.

My favorite part of the manga is how Kazuha deals with realizing that she’s in love with Maki, who Senko also has feelings for. It’s very realistic; she handles it horribly, trying to hide things and pretend that there’s nothing between them. Since Kazuha is one of the most transparent characters in all of manga, this doesn’t work out very well. Notably, she has to be kicked in the butt by both her friend Asako (who tells Senko everything) *and* by Arata, who points out that hiding your crush merely hurts the friend more. Her heart to heart with Senko at the end of the volume doesn’t resolve things, but it feels real.

And then there’s Arata’s older brother, Tohru Honjo. He only has one scene in this volume, so I don’t want to go into his character as much now, saving it for future volumes. I note that the moment we see him he manages to project an aura of ‘cool’ – genuine cool, rather than just trying to be cool. He’s easily the character who sees the most and recognizes the contortions all the others are going through. And right away, he meddles, trying to move Kazuha and Maki closer together. His meddling is very honest and upfront (necessary considering the cluelessness of his friends), and doesn’t seem mean or cheap, the way it often does in manga. He’s a great addition to the cast. He also has bedroom eyes (called ‘droopy eyes’ here). I love any character with bedroom eyes.

Best gag in the volume – Momoka teaming up with the rest of the family to whack Kazuha with a magazine and then blame it on Ichihisa. I love seeing scenes of this huge family, because they feel so real.

The art is messy, there’s tiny little side comments everywhere, and following Kazuha’s ups and downs can be literally exhausting. But I still love this series. If I recall, Volume 3 also kicks more plots into high gear. Stay tuned…

By Banri Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Sekai De Ichiban Daikirai!” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by CMX.

Generally speaking, when I start to like a series or title, I really fall for it in a big way. Online research, buying other Japanese works by the same author, pasting into Excite’s translation engine – that sort of thing. And I talk about it a lot online, be it Livejournal, Twitter, or here. And while for the most part I’ve started this blog ‘in media res’ and do not, for example, plan to go back and review the previous 5 Magic Touches, there are three series that I feel I should eventually go back and review properly, as they continue to be my obsession today.

Two of them are Gatcha Gacha (no, the other one) and Excel Saga. I’ll be getting to those later. The other one is Banri Hidaka’s first multi-volume series, I Hate You More Than Anyone! This was also her debut work in North America, coming out from CMX in 2007.

This leads to one of the first big problems with the work – it’s a sequel, of sorts. Yes, it can be read as a stand-alone work. In fact, by necessity, it is in North America. But if you pick up a copy of the book, and open the cover, the first thing you see are teenagers you don’t know talking about Kazuha, our female lead, and a note saying that the characters’ ages are from the manga ‘Let Me Hear Your Song’. I wouldn’t blame someone for putting it down and looking for the earlier work.

Banri Hidaka debuted in the pages of Hana to Yume with various one-shots and short series, as do most manga artists these days. As she wrote them, she began to depict some of the protagonists as coming from the same family, the Akiyoshis. A family of father, mother, and 6 children, we gradually meet the family over the course of two one-shots and 4 series ranging from 3 to 6 chapters, which were subsequently collected into 4 volumes of various titles. (They’ve now been released as 2 chunky tomes, called The Akiyoshi Family series – this is the easiest way to find them on Amazon Japan.)

Kazuha, the heroine of IHYMTA!, was first introduced in a short one-shot dealing with her sister Momoka. It showed her as a successful hairstylist, and also commented on her mannish looks. After a 6-chapter series dealing with the eldest brother, Chizuru, and his delinquent high school days, Hidaka-san presumably thought she’d wrap things up with a look at the eldest daughter and her own high school life.

Of course, the series ended up being her first really big hit, and it ran for 13 volumes before finishing. The characters proved so popular that the series spawned an occasional spinoff, As You Like It, which runs in Bessatsu Hana to Yume whenever the author feels like a new chapter; and Rei and Kazuha are minor supporting characters in her 2004 manga V.B. Rose, which Tokyopop is currently releasing.

What all this amounts to is that there’s no way that a North American reader can approach this manga the way that it was written for the Japanese Hana to Yume fan. The series is filling out the plot beats that regular readers already read about in the earlier series. And since CMX is translating it accurately (which I give them credit for), the constant footnotes to prior works and explanations for characters being 6-8 years younger than readers are familiar with can be wearing.

Now, all that having been said, I Hate You More Than Anyone! is the story of Kazuha Akiyoshi, a tomboyish oldest sibling of six, and her relationship with the eventual love of her life, Maki Sugimoto, a fey-sounding hairstylist who’s creepily obsessed with her. As you can guess from the title, she can’t stand his attention. As you can guess from the fact that this is a shoujo manga, they’re totally meant for each other.

Hidaka-san is clearly feeling things out as she goes, and this first volume of the manga is quite uneven, especially compared to later volumes. Maki’s feminine speech (Kazuha calls Maki ‘that gay guy’ at one point) is toned down quite a bit as the series goes along, and the parenthetical asides absolutely litter every panel, cluttering up the already cluttered art. (This last is something that has almost become a trademark of hers – you can still see asides littering the panels of V.B. Rose, for example.) And the entire style is far more broad and cartoonish comedy than we’d seen in her earlier works. Kazuha frequently headbutts, punches, kicks, and ties to ceilings her friends and family, something that will continue as the series goes on, culminating in our heroine being thrown through a 3rd-story window and stomping back into class with a bloody forehead 3 seconds later, no worse for wear.

The last major flaw of this volume is that Tohru Honjo isn’t in it. We’ll have to wait for Volume 2 to meet the best character in the series. And Maki, in this volume, gives the impression of a creepy staker guy at times. This is fairly common with manga that start with the hero already totally in love with our heroine, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Luckily, there’s a chapter showing he can be just as stressed out and flawed as the rest of us, which helps to make him more likeable.

Since I’ve spent so long going on about its weaknesses, I should probably talk about why I love this series so much. Kazuha is a fun lead heroine. She’s an emotional roller coaster, vacillating between hot-headed anger and girlish adoration (she is, in fact, an excellent tsundere example, several years before the type became overdone). But she’s also the eldest of a huge family, and we get to see her be the capable older sister as well. In fact, the last chapter is about her having to stand up Maki as Rei falls ill and she has to rush him to the doctor. She angsts briefly about date vs. family, and quickly realizes it’s no contest – family wins.

She’s also blessed with two strong female friends, although Senko appears to be more of a rival in this first volume. She and Senko clearly come to blows so often because of their similarities – both are pretty girls adored by their underclassmen, both have huge tempers that go off at the slightest provocation, and both are at this point falling for the same guy – even though Kazuha refuses to admit this. (The title of the series no longer applies to Kazuha by about Volume 6 or so, but that’s fine, because by then Senko can take up the reins with HER relationship denial.) And we also get Senko’s spirits, which are the ghost-like things that come out of her mouth. A lot of anime and manga use these when a character is beaten or ‘dying’ in a comedic fashion, but Senko goes so far as to be able to control and strangle Kazuha with them!

And we have the Akiyoshi family, who are allowed to provide humor while still being quite realistic. Having six kids means that both parents are working basically all the time, so the siblings all have to step up and take responsibility. (Well, mostly – Ichihisa is a little brat, though a hilarious one. And he and Tonami, along with their mother, are the only ones in the entire family who AREN’T tsunderes.)

Mostly, I enjoy the manga because it’s fun to read about these people. There’s some angst, but usually it lasts only a page or two before being undercut with a comedic moment. The characters have immature temper tantrums, but are also allowed to act like adults. Despite the cartoon violence, Kazuha feels like a high school girl discovering love for the first time, and realizing how it can make you crazy. We laugh at her antics but root for her. And everyone turns out to be correct – she does look more feminine with the short haircut.

I’ll review later volumes of the series when I can as well. Likely they will not be as long as this one was. I did mention the obsessed thing, right?