By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Oyayubi kara Romance” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

And so my favorite lost cause comes to an end, wrapping up all of its remaining dangling plot points that its editor will let wrap up. I had to laugh at Tsubaki’s sidebar, where she notes she wanted to end the manga with Chiaki’s bitchy twin sister again, as that’s how it started, and her editor said “Don’t do that, no one remembers her anymore.” It’s funny because it’s true.

So what do we get wrapped up here? Why, Chiaki and Yosuke’s feelings for each other! Which we actually wrapped up in Volume 8, so naturally we have both of them doubting themselves here. To the author’s credit, however, I did like the way she handled this. They met through massage, due to Yosuke’s stiff back. Now that he’s resolved his past demons and confessed to Chiaki, he’s relaxed. A fact that, when realized, sends both of them into panic. Chiaki as she fears now that he doesn’t need massage Yosuke will abandon her, and Yosuke worrying that he now has no appeal to Chiaki and her massage-obsessed self.

So Chiaki suddenly becomes obsessed with getting sexy. This is the second funniest part of the manga, as she goes around asking for advice on how to be a hot sexy thing. Considering that she’s an adorable puppy of a high school girl, most people correctly point out it would be hard to carry off, and also note that Yosuke would just be irritated with her for trying to put on a fake sexy persona anyway. My favorite part is when she turns to “Sexy Queen Natsue” for advice, who notes that she doesn’t try to be sexy. When Chiaki then turns to Harumi and asks what he finds sexy, and he wriggles and blushes, Natsue quickly notes how sexy she finds his embarrassment.

In the end, of course, the couple realize that it’s not just about massage for them, but their love of each other, and they reconcile. This leads to the final epilogue chapter, where the third-years (Natsue, Harumi and Ayame) graduate, and we get a big party to wrap it up. It’s very odd seeing a series end with the graduation of beta characters but not the leads, but this is the danger of making your lead couple first-years. (I had forgotten to note the funniest part of this volume, by the way, which was Yuna’s attempts to bake a cake. As a best-friend character she’s been really generic through the series, but her baking attempts are so bad they put even C-Ko to shame. This, combined with Yosuke’s managing to get a great cake out of her by bullying her through it, drill-sergeant style, were hysterical).

And then there’s Natsue and Harumi, my favorites. As is usual by now, they don’t get big moments, but little fun scenes. In addition to the aforementioned sexy definition scene, we see Natsue getting extensions (so her hair now looks as it did in the flashback) in order to attempt to look younger; Ayame deviously tricking Harumi into giving Natsue his second button on his coat (I love Ayame more and more with each book), and finally Natsue and Chiaki talking about the future, and future worries. This ends with Natsue turning and giving Chiaki (and more importantly the reader) a big smile. The buildup to this wasn’t perfect, but that’s irrelevant, as it’s meant to be pure service as a reward to the reader for 9 volumes of Natsue’s deadpan face. It’s fantastic. (And we get Harumi’s smile at the end as well, in a mirror to the end of their flashback from earlier volumes).

There’s lots of add-ons in this volumes, showing once again how messy and disjointed it actually is. A list of what the editor rejected in terms of plotlines, pages talking about what happens in the future to many of the minor characters, and a bunch of 4-komas to wrap things up. Really, the final volume of The Magic Touch is almost a microcosm of the series. It has a lot of massage, some cute but ultimately sexless romance, a lot of plot points that seem to go somewhere and never do, and a cast where you have to keep reminding yourself who is who. Despite this, I still am recommending it, as just because a series isn’t great doesn’t mean it does not have redeeming qualities. For one, it’s nice seeing the development of a series (and its editorial fiats) so blatantly on the page. And for another Natsue is totally awesome. Even the author agrees – she names Natsue as her final character here.

We’ll miss you, Magic Touch. But look forward to Oresama Teacher in 2011.

By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Oyayubi kara Romance” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

Well, at the end of Volume 7 of this series, I noted that I hoped the next volume would give us more humor and massage. Luckily, I get both here, although still not as much massage as the earlier volumes. But then, that’s because the author is busy moving the romance between Chiaki and Yosuke forward.

One thing I really liked about this is seeing Yosuke having to forcibly stop himself from getting more physical with Chiaki. This is unsurprising from a reserved guy with a tortured past, but it’s handled very well, showing a certain honest-to-god passion that tends to be missing much of the time from Hana to Yume guys. The implication that kissing Chiaki has unlocked his libido is refreshing, especially as the series as shown us multiple times that Chiaki really wants to ravish *him*, and how this is only partially sublimated through the massage.

Meanwhile, it’s culture festival time, and the massage club is having to deal with the fact that if they do a maid massage cafe, the customers will only be horny guys trying to see up their skirts when they massage. The solution to this, of course, is cross-dressing! And yes, the girls in the massage club to make very handsome fake guys. The same cannot be said of the guys in the club, who (with a few bishie exceptions) make very ugly girls. Nevertheless, it seems to succeed very well. Sadly, it also shows one of the author’s major faults, which is her inability to distinguish between so many characters. It’s far too easy to get people mixed up in this manga.

We get a decent amount of Natsue and Harumi here. I’m highly amused by the bath scene, where all the guys note that they can hear everything the girls are saying in the other bath, and all stay very quiet to try to hear the other girl’s feelings. In particular, I love after all this has happened seeing Natsue quietly smile down at a hiding Harumi and asking “Was it fun?” More to the point, however, we see that Natsue has realized that since Harumi and Ayame are completely unable to break out of their family situations, she has to be the one to do it… and she doesn’t have the power or skill yet. This is, of course, why she’s going to study abroad, something she’s still keeping from Harumi. The scene with her and Ayame was very sweet, showing two friends who could have become rivals but instead are working together to make themselves happier.

Oh yes, and Ayame meeting Amane (and not thinking his eyes are scary at all) is a hideous deus-ex-machina to clean up romantic loose ends… except it’s also incredibly adorable, so I’ll give it a pass. Amane also gets a nice, if awkward speech that leads to Ayame realizing that she can be the chain link binding together Natsue and Harumi… and that’s what she wants more than anything. Bonds of friendship.

So Chiaki and Yosuke are dating, the cast is almost ready to get to the end of the school year, and most of the loose ends are wrapping up. (There are still some loose ends… whatever happened to Chiaki’s evil twin anyway?) A solid volume of this unassuming and unspectacular series.

By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Oyayubi kara Romance” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

The majority of this volume of Magic Touch is devoted to finally working out Yosuke’s past – why he’s so bad around women, and what it is that he’s forgotten. He goes back to his hometown here, and finally manages to piece things together.

The volume suffers from JUST being about this. If you don’t like Yoseuke, you’re going to struggle to get through this. I admit that I really like Magic Touch’s ancillary characters, and the lack of Natsue was especially disheartening. We do get a side-story at the end with Sanae and Tanaka, but like a great deal of this series, that’s more eccentric than actually readable.

I will admit that the flashback revelation is handled pretty well. It revolves around a younger Yosuke being kidnapped, and the woman doing so is a truly scary psycho. It’s not hard to see why he repressed those memories. There’s also a large psychological component to the entire volume, as we see Yosuke trying to analyze why he acts the way he does, and how he handled grief as a boy when his mother died. (A lot of manga mothers tend to die of unmentioned wasting away disease, sort of like consumption. Fruits Baskets is a notable exception.) Likewise, his younger brother also can’t move forward without his brother to rely on. The incident really affects the entire family.

Chiaki is also not doing much in this volume, though it is amusing seeing her twitchy clumsiness as she worries about where Yosuke is. There’s a cliffhanger ending (before the long side-story) that indicates that Vol. 8 should finally be moving their relationship forward, however, so that will be nice to see. And since the series is 9 volumes, it’s also about time.

Really, this isn’t that great a volume of Magic Touch, and I likely read it out of pure stubbornness by now. I do hope that Vols. 8 & 9 will get back to what I feel are the manga’s core strengths – humor and massage.