Monthly Archives: January 2012

Love Hina Omnibus, Vol. 2

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By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

At the end of the last Love Hina omnibus, we left our hero and heroine having just failed their entrance exams. We open this second volume with Keitaro depressed. This is his third straight failure, and the pressure is on him to find something else to do with his life besides apply to Todai. What’s more, a dashing (if eccentric) young man has arrived in town. This is Seta, Naru’s crush, and Keitaro completely fails to measure up to him. Seta also brings along a young girl, Sarah, who like many bratty young girls in manga proceeds to abuse and belittle our hero at every turn. Is it any wonder Keitaro decides to give up?

I’ll be honest, I still find Keitaro a weakness in this series. Searching for a purpose in life is all very well and good, and god knows we’ve all done it. The trouble is that we haven’t all had six different women all find they have feelings for us. Keitaro is still mostly defined by his failures and his bad luck, and occasionally being polite. He needs to have a better goal than ‘get into university so I can meet my mysterious promised girl’. We actually do start to see the first hint of that here, but I only know this because I’ve read the series before. For a new reader who is unaware that Keitaro’s gluing pots together is foreshadowing, it’s just 3 more volumes of him accidentally walking in on women naked.

Speaking of the women, aside from Naru and Mutsumi, they’re once again given short shrift here. It amazes me that Negima has a cast of 31 main girls, as Akamatsu has enough trouble handling the 6 he has here. Shinobu, Motoko and Su continue to get a focus about every 15 chapters, and Kitsune gets even less than that. That said, Kitsune’s focus chapter was actually a high point of the volume, as we see her love of alcohol and mischief is tempered by a genuine desire to see Naru and Keitaro get over themselves. We also see that one should not try to play mind games with her unless one is prepared to face the consequences – she’s quite cunning. As for the others, Shinobu continues to worry about immaturity (and first kisses), and Motoko about being a samurai yet having romantic feelings. Su gets a brief chapter where we see what she might be like as an adult, but this doesn’t really change her personality noticeably.

The exception is Mutsumi, who gets her largest role here (she sadly appears less often as the series goes on, the curse of not actually living at the Inn). Mutsumi is a lot of fun, and the revelation that she’s actually quite intelligent and only failed one entrance exam as she forgot to put her name down is unsurprising. There are bigger revelations, however, as it becomes increasingly apparent to Naru that Mutsumi is the girl Keitaro made him promise to. This leads to a situation where Naru has to make a decision to give up on Keitaro in order to let him find his destiny. His destiny, of course, has spent the entire manga showing that she already knows that Keitaro and Naru are destined to be together. And once again true feelings end up getting buried (at least on Naru’s side – Mutsumi honestly seems OK with letting Keitaro go).

Love Hina continues to show the strengths that Akamatsu had at this time. Lots of physical comedy, lots of fanservice, and the ability to develop a cliched yet likeable romantic plot. It also shows off many of his weaknesses, which he would improve on with Negima. In the end, though, the big drawback is that I’m not a 22-year-old guy anymore, and Love Hina is a title that’s very rewarding for 22-year-old guys but very frustrating for ones who are older and more mature. For pure nostalgia reasons, this is worth a buy, however. And I seem to recall the next volume should be more interesting.

Manga the Week of 1/18

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3rd week of the month from Midtown Comics/Diamond usually means Yen Press, and indeed, that’s what we see here, with several new January releases!

(Note to Sailor Moon fans: we’re going by Diamond lists, and Kodansha books are always late to Diamond. I’m hoping for next week.)

Bandai, still trickling out its last few releases, has the 4th of its Code Geass “Queen” doujinshi anthologies, devoted to the female cast of Geass having fun sexy times together. Though not *that* sexy, this isn’t that kind of doujinshi.

Vertical puts out the penultimate volume of their release of Twin Spica! This is a 400-page bumper crop of space academy goodness, featuring the Japanese Vol. 13 and 14, I believe. Definitely read it if you want to feel happy and sad at the same time (which is what this series specializes in).

Viz apparently has the 5th volume of Pokemon Black and White, which I admit I know little about. But it’s Pokemon, and that still sells after all these years. Must be doing something right.

And then there’s the big pile of Yen. The big debut this month is the manga adaptation of Durarara!! It’s not the light novel license fans wanted (likely as that would sell about 15 copies each); and it’s not the anime (which has the benefit of awesome voice acting), but I’m hoping this adaptation works well with its source material, as opposed to other anime/novel/manga franchises currently being released by Yen where the manga suffers in comparison (coughHaruhicough). I will admit the cover is a great start. Very stylish!

Also from Yen, we have Vol. 8 of the runaway bestseller Black Butler; the final volume of Yen’s Shonen Sunday title Darren Shan, known over here as Cirque Du Freak; the final volume of Zombie Loan, another Peach-Pit classic; Volume 5 of tits ‘n gore series High School Of The Dead; and Volume 8 of fantasy/mystery/Lewis Carroll pastiche Pandora Hearts. There’s also new volumes of 13th Boy and Black God, for you fans of Korean Manwha. Lastly, the 4th volume of one of my favorite novel series is coming out from Yen: Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel. I wonder if this will resolve the pseudo-cliffhanger from the last book, or leave us dangling some more? Can’t wait to find out…

Anything appealing to you this week?

Oresama Teacher, Vol. 6

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By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

It’s the rare manga that can make me laugh when I open the front cover and look at the title page, but that’s what Oresama Teacher does here. Shinobu not only lampshades one of the more obvious faults of this series (a lack of other female characters), he also suggests Mafuyu is trying to create a “reverse harem”. Though there are a few guys here that are falling for her, I’d argue that he’s incorrect. This isn’t a reverse harem as this series is simply not focused on romance – mostly as the leads are too dense to understand what they’re feeling. How can you recognize love if simple friendship is beyond you?

Likewise, the first chapter of this volume is simply top comedy, as we meet yet another cast member with no common sense. Shinobu is simply a flake, albeit a skilled one, and therefore matches up well with “Super Bun”, who gets trotted out here again to my delight. It’s interesting to note that Shinobu flat out worships the series’ main villain, Miyabi. In fact, it almost borders on BL, without ever quite going there (just in case both are needed later to have feelings for Mafuyu). The fight itself, meanwhile, shows how clever Mafouyu can be when she’s strategic – thinking on her feet about how best to defeat a ninja and even using some pseudo-ninja techniques.

The rest of the volume is not nearly as funny, but that’s not a bad thing – we’re finally getting a pile of plot and backstory that has been hidden from us. Shinobu ends up joining the Public Morals Squad (as the world’s most obvious mole), and the three club members start to analyze exactly why the bet the school principal has with Saeki is so weird – why does the administration WANT delinquency in the school? Mafuyu thinks that she now has enough that she can get Saeki to tell her the rest, but he proves surprisingly cold, pushing her away by pushing on one of her biggest buttons – the “I want to stop being a delinquent” button. But is that really what she wants?

Having also been abandoned by Hayasaka (whose reasons are far more teenage boy-oriented than Saeki’s), we then get a wonderful scene of her opening up to the other girls in the class, and trying to be friends with them. It’s wonderful not only because her desperation and tomboyishness is amusing, but also because the other girls in class genuinely seem to like her, even if they find her incredibly strange. You could argue this is because they’ve never seen her fighting, but it’s rather nice, and makes me hope that one day we will see more female presence in this manga. It’s not going to be today, though – after defending Hayasaka, who still has his horrible reputation, Mafuyu runs off, realizing that hanging out with the other guys is where she wants to be.

Then there’s Saeki. If you recall, he’s the title character (though France actually changed the title to “Girl Fight”, putting the emphasis more on Mafuyu). His reasons for pushing Mafuyu away are entirely predictable, but this doesn’t make them poorly written, and the scenes with his grandfather are both touching and intriguing. A telling point comes towards the start of the book, when Mafuyu is running off to fight Shinobu, and Saeki asks her why she fights. Note that she doesn’t give a typical manga reason like “to defend the weak” or “to battle injustice”. She fights because she was challenged, and that’s it. She is Saeki’s reminder of what he once was, and that’s why he tries to get rid of her. Of course, she’s made of sterner stuff, which he knows but would rather not admit.

We end on a cliffhanger, with Saeki starting to tell Mafuyu the real reason for the bet, and what the bet actually involves. It’s going to be a long wait till the next volume, but when it comes I’m willing to bet there will be lots of fights, stupidity, and shoujo cliches. Just the way I like it.