Monthly Archives: November 2017

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 7.5: The Silver Princess and the Blue Knight, Part One

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By Takehaya and Poco. Released in Japan as “Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Warnis.

The first of a two-part side story devoted to Koutarou and Clan’s adventures during the climax of Book Seven, Rokujouma 7.5 is solid but does suffer from the fact that throughout the book, the reader knows far more about what’s going on than the main characters. From the moment that Koutarou, dressed in his Blue Knight armor, rescued the princess it was clear that he was going to be making history rather than changing it, adnd that he was the Blue Knight. But Clan doesn’t see it that way (understandably, perhaps, as this is such a touchstone) and they spend a frustrating amount of time searching for the “real” Blue Knight. Of course, another major goal of this book is to get us to like Clan, who I suspect may end up part of the harem; she’s still not as likeable as the rest of the cast, but she’s getting there.

There’s a bit less humor in this volume than prior ones, mostly due to the main plotline, but there are moments that made me smile. The princess’ female companions on her journey all seem to remind Koutarou of his companions from the future… and they tend to act like said companions as well, with Charl, Alaia’s younger sister, behaving exactly as you’d expect a younger Theia to do. As for the Yurika analogue… I don’t want to spoil, but it may be the best joke in the book (unless it’s the food torture, which also involves the Yurika analogue). Koutarou and Clan discuss how much of this is just coincidence. The Rokujouma reader knows that not all of it is, and that Harumi certainly seems to be Alaia’s reincarnation, but it’s not clear how much this applies to the others.

The main plot is more serious, with the Kingdom already being ruled by the enemy Grand Viziers (so to speak) and Alaia fleeing for her life through the countryside. This serves to show off what a good Princess she is, as well as show the brutality of those currently in power – she actually debates just giving in and letting them rule if it means the people are safe and happy, but it rapidly becomes clear that no, the people are sacrifices they will use to destroy Alaia. And of course you see Koutarou and Alaia growing closer, but as the play says (Koutarou is trying to do things as the play laid out, but it didn’t cover everything). Their flirting is top notch, and while time and distance are likely going to ensure they can’t be together, I suspect Harumi will get more and more of Alaia’s memories as time goes on.

So this isn’t the best Rokujouma out there, but it’s decent, and reads very quickly. Fans who haven’t already read all 20-odd volumes should pick it up. Next time we’ll be back in the present for Book 8, but after that 8.5 should conclude this side story.

Anime NYC, Day Three

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The last day of NYCC is usually the quietest, and it proved to be the same with Anime NYC, as I only had one panel to go to. As a result I took the time to go through Artist’s Alley up at the top of the Javits, which was filled with talented art from talented artists and also more My Hero Academia stuff than you can shake a stick at. Anyone who doubts it’s not the biggest Jump title out there needs to look again. After that I took one last pass through the dealer’s room, and then went to room camp before the Vertical panel.

Unfortunately Windows 10 caused my computer to dump what I had been typing, so I can’t tell you who was running the panel before Vertical. It was on cosplay basics and advice, and it seemed like good advice – I liked the discussion about how you shouldn’t put your hair in a bun when wearing a wig, as it will always show. After this we got Vertical’s panel, which had a long AV setup, and also reminded me that it just feels weird to have a panel without Ed.

Vertical only had one new announcement, and it’s for Tsutomu Nihei’s latest manga, APOSIMZ, aka Ningyou no Kuni. It runs in Shonen Sirius, and features many of the themes Nihei is known for – if you’ve read BLAME! and Knights of Sidonia, you know what you’re getting here. Also like Knights of Sidonia, there is apparently the occasional delve into lowbrow humor – I remarked several times that Sidonia sometimes felt like a harem comedy.

The Nekomonogatari (Black) novel was for sale at the con ahead of street (in fact, a lot longer ahead of street than I expected, as the release date got pushed back to December 19th yesterday), and so a lot of the people in the audience were there for Monogatari. Vertical did have a treat for them – the rough draft and final version of VOFAN’s North American cover art for Nekomonogatari (White), which should be out at the end of January unless that gets delayed a bit as well. It features Black Hanekawa and the Tiger monster who is the book’s main antagonist, and looks fabulous – VOFAN called it his best work.

The rest of the panel consisted of raffles and giveaways – there was a lot of nice stuff raffled off, though I didn’t win anything. After that it was time to bid the con farewell and head home. For a first-year con it was excellent, and you could tell that the showrunners were seasoned pros. I hope we get to see it again next year, as I’ll definitely make plans!

Anime NYC, Day Two

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Day 2! Though first, I missed an announcement from Day 1: Mangagamer has finished Golden Fantasia Cross, and it will be out in December. This is an Umineko fighting game with what I believe is a significant amount of plot thrown in, and it even has a slightly different ending from the visual novel. The bad news is it’s a fighting game, which means you need a certain level of skill. We’ll see how far I advance.

Day 2 began for me with the Kodansha Comics panel, featuring the audible and personable Ben Applegate and the inaudible and thus anonymous narrator, who really needs to learn to project to the back of the house. In terms of new new titles, there was one print and a pile of digital.

The print title is Golosseum, apparently spelled with the G. It’s from the author of the long and never licensed Karate Fighter Minoru manga, and runs in Kodansha’s Nemesis magazine. It’s apparently a political martial arts title, and reminded me a lot of The Legend of Koizumi – real life political figures caricatured for fun. So we have Rasputin (Russia’s greatest love machine), Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton, etc. It looks like a lot of fun.

Digital debuts, arriving as soon as next week. Lovesick Ellie is a Dessert title about a girl who likes to tweet about a made-up boyfriend. That won’t end well. My Brother Is a Shut-In is from Morning Two, something I always approve of. It seems to be about a girl whose brother, as you may have guessed, is a shut-in, but that may change soon.

Pitch-Black Ten is from Shonen Magazine R, and looks like an action fantasy; the author also did Buster Keel!. Drifting Dragons is from good! Afternoon, and seems to be the Dragon equivalent of Delicious in Dungeon – we hope you enjoy eating dragons.

Living-Room Matsunaga-san is also a Dessert title, and seems to involve a younger girl moving into a boarding house her uncle runs and meeting the college-aged residents. Lastly, we have The Prince’s Black Poison, a Betsufure title about a girl who’s taken care of her “helpless” childhood friend, but when she tries to do things away from him, he reveals himself to be far more manipulative than she guessed.

They also discussed the upcoming print release of Tokyo Tarareba Girls, as well as Sailor Moon Eternal, a re-release which looks fantastic. Lots of things coming from Kodansha, who are still putting out more digital than you can possibly keep up with.

The next panel was Yen Press, and they too had a pile of stuff to announce. They also had someone translating in sign language, which was very cool. They showed off the Pandora Box, which is one of the most impressive box sets I have ever seen. It’s simply breathtaking. And then new announcements, including one I’ve been waiting on for about a year…

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online will have the light novels out next year. These are by the Kino’s Journey author, and do not have Kirito or the main cast in them. I reviewed the first manga recently… dammit, that means my URL will have a (2) again. I hate that.

Other light novels announcements are Defeating the Demon Lord Is a Cinch (If You Have a Ringer), which I think may be a Fantasia Bunko series and is very much in the ‘fantasy world, kill monsters’ sort of genre. The best thing about it is that the artist is named ‘bob’. We also have the much-anticipated SukaMoka series, aka (deep breath) World End: What Will You Do At the End of the World? Will You Save Us?. This is apparently an emotional tearjerker of a series, and it already has a sequel in Japan.

A big surprise (to the panelists as well – apparently the license was finalized this morning) was Final Fantasy VII: On the Way to a Smile, the first in a series of Final Fantasy novels. It’s actually a short story book that has various stories taking place around the time of VII and Advent Children.

On the manga front, we see The Strange Creature at Kuroyuri Apartments, a Young Gangan title about a demon summoner’s young daughter who is ordered to entertain the landlord of an apartment complex. Tsuno no Gakuen is about boys with horns on their heads who can do magic, and our hero is self-conscious his horns are too small. Which is not a metaphor for anything, I’m sure. It runs in Young Ace Up!.

Catterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy is a done-in-one title from Gene Pixiv. A fantastic girl is rejected by the boy she loves, and hen vanishes… only to return as a caterpillar! It looks really cute. Teasing Master Tagaki-san was a series I’d heard of before, and I highly approve of its license. A boy is determined to tease the girl he’s friends with… but this is easier said than done, as he’s easily teased and she loves to tease him. It runs in Shogakukan’s Gessan.

Shibuya Goldfish is a horror title from Gangan Joker, and is soooooooo not my thing, but horror fans should like it. Fruits Basket Another is also licensed, and will be three volumes total. I… have mixed feelings about this, but we’ll talk about that when it comes out. There’s also a Little Witch Academia manga coming out in their new JY line for younger readers. It looks really cute and fun.

After this, I ate lunch and wandered around a bit. My final panel of the day was a panel on Japanese feminism, run by Anne Lee, who runs the shojopower.com website. Her goal was to show us that yes, Japanese feminism does, and did, actually exist, and I think she did a good job. She focused on four different women who made their presence known.

Raichi Hiratsuka was described as sort of the Japanese Susan B. Anthony. She started a highly influential (and controversial) literary magazine in 1911 called Saito (Bluestocking), which featured essays, poetry and short stories about “the new women”. The authors were known to (gasp!) smoke and drink, so it was not well liked by men of the time. She then tried to help get women the vote, which came close to happening in 1921, but one comment by an influential guy killed it, and she went into seclusion due to this.

Then along came Beate Sirota Gordon, an Austrian woman who grew up in Japan, went to an American college right around the time of WWII, and then got a job with the US government so she could return to Japan and find her parents. She ended up helping to rewrite the Japanese constitution… which was controversial enough, as the Americans were “helping” them write it the way that they wanted.

She researched the hell out of this, though, impressing the Americans, and added a lot of things that gave women more rights. A lot of them were cut, but some weren’t, and the Constitution passed despite the vehement objections of Japanese men. As for Raichi, she was shocked and conflicted – having this granted to her by Americans rather than fought for and won in a political victory seemed a bit hollow.

We also discussed Machiko Hasegawa, creator of Sazae-san, possibly the most famous Japanese manga ever – at least in Japan. The manga ran from 1946-1974. The anime began in 1969 and is still running, meaning it crushes the Simpsons record. Sazae-san was pretty slice of life comic strip gags, but as the series went on Sazae-san herself got involved in feminism, and the strips sometimes delved into that.

Lastly we discussed Rokudenashiko and her vagina kayak, which I was already very familiar with, as I’d seen the author’s panel at TCAF and reviewed her book here. It got into a discussion about how Japan is OK with penis festivals but gets upset with vaginas, whether this was politically motivated (she has a friend who was criticizing the government), and how the vagueness of the obscenity laws may not have helped. It was a well-researched and enjoyable panel.

And that was all I had on tap for today. I wanted to see the Fate/GO panel, but that looked to be difficult to get into. Tomorrow I only have one panel, which is Vertical. I therefore plan to take a look at Artist’s Alley in the morning, hit up the panel, and then head home. This was a great second day of the con.