Monthly Archives: November 2017

Twinkle Stars, Vol. 4

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By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan as two separate volumes by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

The decline and fall of Hijiri continues in this omnibus, as she tries her hardest to be a Hanajima but in the end is more of a Rin, complete with the angry freakouts whenever she’s embarrassed. This is not to say I don’t enjoy the entire plotline; the relationship between Hijiri and Saki may not be the healthiest in the world, but it’s cute, and leads to several laugh-out-loud moments, such as seeing how Hijiri first ‘brought Saki home’. Her own frustrations seem to spill over into her interaction with others as well, as she tries to help a girl who likes Yuuri confess to him even though she knows he’s going to reject the girl, and also tries to nag Yuuri into making his own advances on Sakuya, even as Yuuri seems content to sit back and watch Chihiro and Sakuya grow closer.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that he suspect Chihiro will simply torpedo himself before too long. Takaya’s series tend to have a common theme of seemingly “pure-hearted and good” people repressing their own emotions and traumas, and we get a lot of that here, as the art shows a large degree of depressed, resigned stares into the middle distance as characters wrestle with the fact that they might actually be forced to confront feelings that they’ve been avoiding for years. Kanade’s past is learned here, and it too manages to be a parade of parental abuse and distorted bouts of anger, another constant in Takaya’s works. I’ve tended to think that Twinkle Stars is trying to apologize to Tohru/Yuki Furuba fans by having this title be the one where they win, with Kanade as “Kyo”, but while Kanade is an awful lot like Kyo, he’s not a romantic lead, so it doesn’t quite fit.

This may make it sound as if the entire volume is nothing but depressing moping around, and it’s not. Takaya does have a certain amount of humor in this book, usually through snarky comments and reaction takes. Again, we see this most in scenes with Hijiri, whose own subplot is meant to be a lighter counterpart to the more serious relationships. This unfortunately does have the effect of diminishing Hijiri a bit, as I noted above – yes, she’s a bit more realistic and flawed, but I also feel she’s becoming almost too much of a caricatured “angry, embarrassed girl”, a trope which I think works better in shonen settings than in shoujo ones.

Twinkle Stars ran 11 volumes in Japan, and we’re up to 8 with this omnibus. I’m not certain if the final volume will be a triple of if we’ll get a single volume 6. In either event, I do still enjoy this series, especially for the emotional resonance, though I am grateful it’s going to be wrapping up soon as I’m not sure how much more teenage romantic drama I can take.

Re: ZERO ~Starting Life in Another World~, Vol. 5

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By Tappei Nagatsuki and Shinichirou Otsuka. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Borque.

I admit that after four volumes of Re: Zero, and without having actually seen the anime (which, let’s remember, adapts the first NINE books), I wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was all about with Rem. I didn’t see why, aside from maybe general personality, she became basically the entire reason to watch the show for many fans. Having now read this 5th book, I think I’ve hit the point where I can say “Oh, yeah, that’s it”. Now that Emilia has broken off with Subaru and returned to the mansion, Rem gets her turn in the spotlight, showing a love and devotion to Subaru that almost goes to extremes. This can be heartwarming (as when she tries to get him to maybe stop hating himself a bit) and also disturbing (a lot of other times), but it’s hard to deny that Subaru transformed Rem’s life, and she’s never going to forget it.

It’s a good thing that someone’s in Subaru’s corner, because the reader certainly isn’t. Yes, it’s time to trawl through another book with the worst protagonist ever, as Subaru shows that after his epic beatdown from last time, he has not learned a single thing, assuring us that he will return to Emilia, save the day, and everything will be great again. Needless to say, that doesn’t happen. In fact, it doesn’t happen twice, as we’ve got another save point, meaning Subaru is free to start brutally dying again. It’s not just him or Emilia this time, though, as seemingly the entire village and mansion is slaughtered by our new enemies, the Witch Cult, led by Petelgeuse, a truly freaky nightmare who seems to revel in being insane because it’s over the top rather than any other reason. Subaru’s (feigned?) mental breakdown halfway through the book may give Rem some much needed spotlight, but it doesn’t do him much good. Even in the very end, we see his rage and fury and think: Yup, still hasn’t learned a goddamn thing.

That said, aside from Subaru I am still enjoying this series a great deal. The election continues apace, and we see once more just how hard it is for Emilia to get anywhere in it when even our grumpy abble seller and Rem show they have an instinctive fear and hatred towards her. Crusch remains an awesomely cool character, and we get some tantalizing background details of how she met Ferris that we want to hear more about. (If only there were a spinoff novel coming out in less than two weeks that would tell us that story!) There’s also a very interesting revelation about Subaru that Petelgeuse makes, which, combined with the witch miasma that pours through him whenever he resets to his save point, makes me wonder just how much of a typical “I am a normal Japanese man in another world” protagonist he is.

So my advice for this new volume of Re: Zero is the same as last time: try not to grind your teeth down to nubs as you read Subaru’s stubborn idiocy, but enjoy the rest of the worldbuilding, the scary villains, and Rem being pure and good and badass (I hope Emilia gets her turn next, but I have a feeling it may be a few more books.)

In This Corner of the World

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By Fumiyo Kouno. Released in Japan as “Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni” by Futabasha, serialized in the magazine Manga Action. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Adrienne Beck.

Sometimes history can spoil a manga a bit. You know something is going to happen going in, simply given where and when the series takes place. That’s absolutely the case with the fantastic omnibus In This Corner of the World, which focuses on a young girl named Suzu, who’s a bit airheaded but good at art, and her coming of age and awkward but loving marriage to an uncommunicative husband. The manga, particular the first two-thirds, focuses on her everyday life as she does household chores, tries to find time to do some drawings, and deals with her sister-in-law’s ire, as Suzu is regarded by the sister-in-law as a bit too ditzy to be a good wife. Which, honestly, sometimes seems to be the case. The kicker here, of course, is that Suzu was born and grew up in Hiroshima, and moves to Kure when she gets married… right before World War II.

As such, there is a certain sense as you read though Suzu’s daily struggles that you’re waiting for the bomb to go off. And there is indeed a bomb, though Suzu does not deal first-hand with the Hiroshima H-bomb. No, it’s just a simple, ordinary bomb that kills her niece and blows off her right hand, the one she draws with. The last third or so of the book has a dazed and grieving Suzu try to come to terms with what’s happening and to try to patch things up with her husband (who was with a prostitute some time ago, which caused friction between them). Suzu is kind-hearted and gentle, though, and so aside from one burst of fury when Japan surrenders (which you can understand given everything she went through) she is able to move on with her life despite the new difficulties.

This is all conveyed through some absolutely gorgeous art, which does not hesitate to try a different style in order to get across the mood or the point that it wants to make. I’d even go so far as to call the art the main reason to buy the book, though the story is good as well. We see chapters done with no dialogue, as storybook-style, as a comic strip (Suzu’s childish drawings of her older brother, which becomes a breathtakingly bittersweet callback right at the end), as karuta art, and even as blurry, out–of-focus scenery as we see Suzu struggling with the loss of her dominant hand. The story is told via the art as well as the narrative, and the result is a volume that makes you want to go back and reread it after you’ve finished.

This is not an easy read, as you might expect, and there are moments of quiet tragedy that sometimes make it hard to move on. But I absolutely recommend it, as it’s an achingly gorgeous book that deserves all the hype it might get.