Yearly Archives: 2018

Mob Psycho 100, Vol. 1

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By ONE. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ura Sunday. Released in North America by Dark Horse Comics. Translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian.

Most folks likely first heard of the manga artist ONE via the series One-Punch Man, which was originally a webcomic (as is Mob Psycho 100) that was picked up by Shueisha. Shueisha, however, realized that it could sell better with an artist with, shall we say, a bit more technique than ONE, and so Yuusuke Murata does the art, though you can see traces of ONE’s style in Saitama and Tatsumaki. Needless to say, One-Punch Man was a success. But there are other series that ONE has written as webcomics, including this one, about a young man who has an average presence but also super psychic powers. This also became big enough in Japan to have an anime, and now we’re getting the manga over here. And in this case, there’s no other artist – ONE’s art is here in all its glory. Sometimes it helps the story/humor immensely, but I will admit at times I felt like I really wanted Murata to be drawing this.

Our hero… arrives on the scene after a bit of a fakeout, as we’re first introduced to Reigen, a supposed spirit medium and exorcist who actually functions more as comedy relief than anything else. This lowly assistant, Shigeo (the ‘Mob’ of the title, referring to his looks being the sort you’d see in a ‘crowd mob’ drawing) is the one with the actual powers. When he’s not helping Reigen with his exorcist work, he’s a “normal” high school student with a crush on a girl (who barely appears) and one of the few people not in a club. This jumpstarts the plot, as the Telepathy Club is desperate for members to avoid getting shut down, and sets their sights on Shigeo. He’s not interested, but ends up dragged in anyway. Even worse, he also ends up being targeted by a group of religious cultists.

For the most part, this is meant to be a funny manga with the plot as an excuse for bizarre reactions and gags, and it succeeds quite well. It definitely picks up in the 2nd half, though, when Shigeo faces the religious cult that forces laughter on people. This leads to the other half of the title, which is the ‘Psycho 100″ part. Shigeo is a very laid-back, mellow sort of guy, but that’s because he’s repressing his emotions. When he hits ‘100%”, he explodes with rage, easily the highlight of the book, and one where the sketchiness of ONE’s art pays off. Unfortunately, sometimes ONE’s art simply looks poor. I realize that’s its charm point, but the flat faces on many of the characters tend to lead me to flat emotions when I think about them, regardless of what they say. I wonder if this is a series that works better in animated form.

Despite those misgivings, this is a very good start to a series, and it’s refreshing to actually have one of the ‘psychic’ manga that used to be omnipresent in Japan but rarely came over here licensed. I look forward to more of Shigeo’s flat, dead face and hope he can keep his rage in check… well, OK, no I don’t. I want more rage.

Re: ZERO ~Starting Life in Another World~, Vol. 8

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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.

This arc continues to be very long, with most of this volume involved with trying to destroy the Witch Cult of Sloth, which proves, unsurprisingly, to be very difficult. It doesn’t seem that way at first – Petelgeuse is taken out with apparent ease, to the point where Subaru is naturally thinking “when is the other shoe going to drop? – but as we get further into the story and the Witch Cultists get more and more insane/clever/both, we start to have lives being lost. None of the named characters, mind, but it upsets Subaru nevertheless, as he feels that this time the deaths are directly attributable to his asking them to help him. Actually, this is a very good volume for Subaru watchers – even though he’s on an upswing and not doing stupid things too much, he’s still having trouble with Julius (Ferris notes his apology in the last book was half-assed) and with Emilia (who shows up to save the day towards the end here, but there’s no joyous reunion as of yet.

The cover and color illustrations feature Felt and Reinhard, and at first I wondered if my copy of the book was missing a scene, as they’re not actually IN the book – what you see in the color illustration is what you get. Instead we have the vast we had at the end of the last book, trying to destroy the Witch Cultists and doing lots of cool things. This includes Wilhelm, who is awesome but very injured by the end of the book; Ferris, who is desperately trying to save lives, even of the enemy, and having very little luck; and Julius, who proves to be an excellent combatant and can control spirits, which is of great benefit to Subaru when they save his life. Subaru’s plan is pretty good, though it ends up having one major flaw, which is that the Witch Cult is EVERYWHERE, even among people Subaru assumed were allies.

As for Petelgeuse, as I noted, he is seemingly killed off early on, but appearances can be deceiving. Indeed, the very nature of the Archbishop of Sloth proves to be somewhat elusive until the very end of the book, when Subaru realizes what is going on and flees (this is why we get no warm reunion with Emilia). This leads to the climax of the book, which has something I was not expecting. I have to assume that there’s going to be a new “reset point” and that we’re not going to have to do the entire White Whale battle again, but it’s ironic that just as Subaru is learning the fragile nature of life, his overpowered ability to avoid death has to be the solution. That said, I’m fairly certain the next volume is the final one in this book. Will he fix things? Will he reconcile with Emilia? And what of Rem, entirely absent from this book?

This was a solid volume of Re: Zero, with a lot of action, and Subaru still being less annoying than he has been. I’m looking forward to more.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 12

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By Fujino Omori and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan as “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka?” by Softbank Creative. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Winifred Bird.

It stands to reason that over the course of a well-written series, you’d expect the characters to grow and change. That said, it’s rare we get such a direct look as we do here. This entire volume of DanMachi is about Bell and his familia’s growth over the course of the last eleven books, and it underlines several times how they’ve matured and are growing up, even if they may not be aware of it themselves. Sometimes the growth is mental, sometimes physical, and sometimes both, but these are not the same people that we met in the first book. It helps that this book is also a pure dungeon crawl, the first in a very long time, and that they face off against a very clever Irregular monster – not one of the Xenos that we’ve gotten to know in the last few books (and we meet another one here), just a monster who was smarter than his brethren, and then started to eat their cores, and now is smart *and* evil.

Bell and Lilly are on the cover, and it’s appropriate that this growth metaphor focuses the most on them. Bell’s has been easier to see in terms of battle prowess, but now we see how he’s matured as a person as well. His “mind has caught up with his body”, as Mikoto puts it, and this has made him a more capable adventurer. That said, he’s still Bell, much to Lilly’s relief, as she worried he was getting too far ahead of everyone else. As for Lilly, she’s learning more how to be a leader, being trained by Daphne here and also imagining a Finn in her head that she strives to be like. (The real Finn does not always match the Finn in Lilly’s head, and I wonder if she knows that his last-minute plan is basically “make myself lose control and go nuts”?) She’s also dealing with abandonment issues, both not wanting to be forsaken by the man she loves and also when she’s told to abandon the injured in her party and escape and seriously considers it. Her maturity is in realizing that’s the most sensible plan… but not doing it.

We meet another Xenos here, a mermaid who seems nice and sweet and has already fallen for Bell, and I suspect we’ll see her again in the future. (I am grateful to the author forgetting her farewell confession to Bell out of the way BEFORE Lilly and the rest arrive – it’s a heartwarming scene that did not need a jealous harem added to it.) We also see that Hestia’s group is now a D group, meaning they have to accept missions from the main office. This first mission was “conquer a new floor”, basically, and it’s implied they failed as they got derailed by this nightmare of a monster, though I’d argue the fact that they took it out should work in their favor. That said, it looks like the next volume may be a murder mystery more than a dungeon crawl, judging by that cliffhanger.

I’m in danger of sounding like a broken record, but DanMachi is simply very well written, and benefits well from being confined to a single volume for once. Any fan of fantasy light novels should have it at the front of their queue.