Monthly Archives: January 2017

Sword Art Online, Vol. 9: Alicization Beginning

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By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. This is it. This is the Big One. This volume of Sword Art Online begins the Alicization Arc, an arc that will not end until Vol. 18 rolls around in December 2019. And you can tell from the writing in many ways, as Kawahara is taking his time to set things up and carefully introduce things that will clearly have relevance later – not least of which is Alice herself, whose disappearance is one of the major plot points of the book, but it’s not resolved here. For those who love the main heroines of Sword Art Online, well, you may be in for some hard times. Asuna is here at the start, as well as Shino. We even hear about future plans, as Shino discusses the next Bullet of Bullets tournament and Asuna and Kirito make plans for going to college overseas. Unfortunately, life has other plans. Fortunately, we have a new heroine, in the best Sword Art Online tradition, to help Kirito with this crisis. He’s even on the cover. Wait, he?

Yes, that’s right, the author has finally realized that the occasional appearance by Klein isn’t cutting it, and gives Kirito someone who can be an equal as well as (sort of) a childhood friend. The conceit of this book is that Kirito is testing a new VR system that’s the most realistic one yet – unlike Aincrad and the other VMRROs we’ve seen to date, this new system is able to mimic things down to the last detail. It’s also, apparently, able to give you vivid backstory if need be – the first 60 or so pages of this book are Kirito, Eugeo and Alice as kids hanging around their medieval fantasy hometown and getting involved in things that they should not. Unfortunately, after an attack in the real world by an ex-member of Laughing Coffin (really, all of these guys basically got away scot-free, didn’t they?), Kirito now finds himself, grown up, in the same world, though he’s now himself and Eugeo doesn’t seem to know him. Now he has to a) find out where he is, b) find out how to return to Asuna, and c) join forces with Eugeo and rescue Alice, who was taken away years ago by Knights as a punishment for transgressing one of the many Laws..

The viewpoint here is, with the exception of the childhood prologue, 1st person Kirito as usual. I find it more tolerable than others do, I suspect, mostly as I think the best way to remind us that Kirito isn’t superhuman is by showing us his thoughts and fears. I also really like Eugeo, the new guy. He’s sort of bright, shiny and innocent, the kind of really good guy that the girls all think Kirito is but he’s never quite managed to pull off. He’s also surprisingly skilled with a sword, and Kirito wonders if more training might even make the two of them a close match. (I hope so. It’s always refreshing seeing Kirito not be the best at something.) When this book is telling Kirito’s story, it’s excellent. Unfortunately, there is one big weakness – Kawahara is fascinated by his invented technobabble (this is also an issue in his other series), and there is endless discussion of vitual reality and what life and a soul actually means. I’m sure it will be highly relevant later, but having it come out in the form of an infodump made things a bit tedious, which is a shame given it was our one big scene with Asuna and Shino.

In any case, though, overall this was a very good start to a very big arc, introducing a new (missing) heroine, giving Kirito a potential male best friend and partner, allowing Kawahara to try his hand at a “fantasy” setting with knights and goblins (who talk about sexually assaulting a young girl, something that apparently is so common in Japanese light novels with goblins that I’ve now run across it three times in less than a month), and setting things up for the next book. Will we be cutting back to the real world and Asuna at all, though? And will Liz and Silica ever get More Appearances? (The back cover of Book 10 may offer a clue there.) Let’s see if Alicization hits the ground running next time.

Franken Fran, Vols. 7-8

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By Katsuhisa Kigitsu. Released in Japan by Akita Shoten, serialized in the magazine Champion Red. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jocelyne Allen, Adapted by Shanti Whitesides.

More of everything. More outrageous humor, more appalling horror, more of the few sympathetic members of the cast having their lives destroyed in the worst way possible, more of the deeply horrible darkness that is humanity, and so many goddamn Sentinels that you’ll never want to watch sentai shows again. All of this is in the final omnibus of Franken Fran, where the author clearly knows things are wrapping up, and has therefore decided to make this Franken Fran’s Greatest hits. Which is fine, as that’s exactly what we read Franken Fran for. It’s over the top, it goes to far, it’s offensive but hilarious. And in the end you aren’t even sure if Fran is alive or dead.

Of course, sometimes things are moving a bit too fast. The author has a lot of stories to tell, and a limited number of pages in which to do so (he said in one afterword that he was forced to make one into a two-parter). The first story in the volume ends SO abruptly that I actually had to check to verify that we weren’t missing pages (and also gives us a bad end to another likable woman whose only crime is hanging around Fran too much, though like most of this ensemble cast she shows up right as rain again later). The art also seems a little messier than usual, as if it’s simply being drawn to too tight of a deadline. And sometimes the stories don’t really land – I admit that I’m sort of sick of the Sentinels, and didn’t need to see this much of their antics again.

The one story in here that stands out above all others – indeed, I suspect it to be the main reason fans clamored for this to be licensed in the first place – has Gavril hired to come to Fran and Veronica’s school and be a substitute teacher. We’ve seen teachers before who don’t act the part and dispense “real life” advice rather than platitudes, but Gavril takes this beyond eleven, telling guys the proper way to threaten rape on their fellow classmates, giving girls advice on how to get ahead in this world, and basically being the worst Great Teacher ever. Naturally, the kids all love her, mostly as, given that they’re in Franken Fran, the entire school is sort of deeply twisted to begin with. Other excellent chapters involve horror (Fran’s octopus specimen gets stolen, with amazingly dreadful results), humor (the continuing awfulness of every moment of Kuho’s life as a policewoman), or simply tragedy (the other best story in this volume, in which Veronica’s new friend at school takes agency against the adults who are gang-raping her in a particularly vengeful way).

The volume caps off with a dream sequence, after Fran is trapped on an ocean liner that sinks to the bottom of the sea. She dreams of the entire cast coming out to thank her for everything she’s done to them – sorry, I mean for them – over the years. Okita is in a human body, Kuho (and her clones) are happy, hell, even Veronica is briefly happy (so you can tell it’s a dream). And, like the first story in the volume, the ending is sort of ambiguous. Did Fran actually wake up and get rescued? Or is she just dreaming she’s back at the operating table? Franken Fran was a grand horror/comedy mess, and while I think it may have offended more people than it impressed, I always admired its moxie. I’ll miss it.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Nine School Competition Arc, Part 1

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By Tsutomu Sato and Kana Ishida. Released in Japan as “Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

I had mentioned in my Manga the Week of post that I was very amused at the coincidence that this third volume released only one month after the 9th volume of A Certain Magical Index, which is *also* the first of a two-book arc featuring a sports competition between various schools disrupted by a terrorist attack. (As it happens, they even have the same translator, who must have wondered what god he offended to get these assignments right in a row.) That said, thankfully the books take slightly different tacks. Index is fully concerned with the terrorist attack, and the competition games take something of a back seat. This first volume of Mahouka’s new arc is almost all about the games themselves, with the terrorist attacks only starting to come up near the end. And while Touma may be Index’s star, he rarely completely overpowers the storylines. The same can’t be said for Tatsuya, who is, as ever, the most awesome man to ever awesome.

I say this with affection, of course. I enjoy this series, and frankly if you’re still reading this series and don’t enjoy what they’re doing with Tatsuya after the first two volumes, what the heck is wrong with you? It’s actually helped by how ridiculous it gets – you can’t help but laugh at his discomfort as Azusa gushes about her love of the mysterious student engineer Taurus Silver, and Tatsuya does everything but rub the back of his head and laugh uncomfortably. Not that he would ever do that, as we do get a bit more backstory as to exactly what’s wrong with his basic personality. It’s apparently by family design, and he literally can’t feel emotional extremes. Which is handy if you want to keep your lead male from the standard harem series ‘whoops I walked in on the girls changing’ stuff, but can be a bit off-putting as well, because it’s hard to get a read on Tatsuya even when we are getting his inner thoughts.

We get a new member of his inner circle this volume as well. Mikihiko is a magician whose abilities are sort of being suppressed by a magic accident right now, and so he’s lumped in Course 2 with the rest of the “bad magic students”. Of course, like every other Course 2 student in Tatsuya’s inner circle, Mikihiko actually has brilliant magical control of spirits and will no doubt shine when the story call for it; his issue seems to be more self-doubt and angst. It’s not just him, either; many of the upperclassmen competing in the games feel a bit underpowered compared to our amazing lead, and those feelings don’t just go away. (The women, of course, have no such issues, and clean up in every event – or would, if not given a game-breaking injury by said terrorists.) Magic School is tough, and everyone is having difficulties working under the pressure.

This being the first of a two-book arc (though like the last arc, it seems to stop rather than come to a cliffhanger – did the author write one huge book that had to be cut in half AGAIN?), there’s lots of plot threads introduced that I’m sure will pay off in the second book, including Chinese mafia and a student from a rival school who seems to have fallen for Tatsuya’s sister Miyuki at first sight (boy, is he in for crushing disappointment) .So in the end, there are only two big flaws to this otherwise highly entertaining series. The first is the magical discussion, which goes on and on as if it’s trying to be a textbook as much as a novel. And the second is Tatsuya, who the reader needs to accept really is just that awesome, or they will hate this. I’ve accepted it. Viva Tatsuya!