Yearly Archives: 2018

Kakafukaka, Vol. 1

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By Takumi Ishida. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Kiss. Released in North America digitally by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Erin Proctor & Molly Rabbitt.

I’ve talked before about the fine balance that some titles need to walk with character development. It’s good to have characters with notable flaws, so that you can show them growing, learning, and changing. On the other hand, particularly in manga where a casual reader can drop a series after the first volume (when most stories have only just laid out the basics), if a character is too unlikable they risk annoying the reader too much. Kakafukaka is a josei series with two people who, at separate points and together, may grate on the reader’s nerves. The supporting cast also has its own issues, and there isn’t really a character that I can hang my hat on here and say “well, at least they’re sympathetic”. On the other hand, this sort of cast and plot is the reasonIe’ve been wanting more josei in the first place, and seeing these broken twenty-somethings blunder through life is why I’m here.

Aki is a young woman who feels it’s been a bit of a downhill slide since middle school. She’s drifting through life, can’t find a steady job, and has a self-loathing complex a mile wide. Oh, and she walked in on her boyfriend screwing another woman. Which means she’s now looking for a new place to live as well. Fortunately, one of her friends is getting married (which comes as a surprise, as she hadn’t told Aki yet) and is looking for someone to take her room in a share house she’s living in with three other boarders. To her surprise, she knows someone else who lives there: Tomoya was her classmate in middle school… and also the boy she lost her virginity to. That said, everything got awkward after that and they drifted apart. Now we’re ready to pick up where we left off? Not quite. Tomoya, it turns out, has erectile dysfunction… something that seems to be cured when he’s around Aki, much to his surprise and Aki’s discomfort. As a result, they reach a very uncomfortable agreement.

Kakafukaka’s issues are front and center, and also the point. Tomoya asks Aki to sleep in the same bed with him, both so that he can get a good night’s sleep (he’s been dwelling on this) and also so that he can see about curing himself. He promises not to “do anything dirty”, but as Aki herself notes, the entire premise kind of revolves around his getting hard when in contact with her. In addition, Tomoya is not all that happy with Aki’s super-low opinion of herself, one of the other flatmates has a crush on Tomoya to a disturbing degree, and Tomoya himself is simply hard to read – one of those “mild-mannered” mellow but stoic types that you see a lot of in titles like this, so Aki can’t help but receive mixed signals.

And so you have a series that shows a lot of promise, but has working against it the personalities of the two leads and the basic premise of their needing to be together. I’m optimistic that the series is going in a positive direction, but the reader might want to wait till a couple more volumes are out and read them in one big gulp.

Durarara!!, Vol. 10

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By Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Stephen Paul.

I had assumed that this would be another of those “all the plot guns fire off at once” volumes, but I was wrong. Indeed, Narita suggests he’s saving everything for the endgame, which is coming up soon. That is not to say that what’s in this volume is without interest. For one thing, we’re introduced to a new Big Bad, who not only lets all the Yodogiri Jinnais (yes, multiple) get crushed, but also gets to crush Izaya as well, something that always pleases me. What’s more, she seems to have a Saika’s power. This makes THREE independently running Saikas who can control people, as we have Anri, Haruna Niekawa (whose absence from her family life is a large plot point here as well), and now Kujiragi, the cliched “secretary secretly running everything behind the scenes”, who is also apparently older than she seems. She also has a fondness for cat puns. She’s a cool new character.

Thought Erika and Walker are hamming it up, Kadota’s presence on the cover is no accident, though it’s his absence that drives most of the plot. What’s been happening in Ikebukuro lately has been like a grenade about to go off, and the two things that stop it going off are Shizuo (because of sheer physical strength) and Kadota (because he’s the Only Sane Man in this entire series). So when Kadota is hospitalized by a passing mystery car, and Shizuo is arrested by cops for… well, they’ll think of some crime or another… all hell is ready to break loose. That said, it’s made clear in their scenes together that Erika is on a more even keel whenever she’s with Anri. She may be a fangirl of Anri’s supernatural powers, but she also knows that Anri needs a big sister, and when she fulfills that role she can avoid running around town threatening everyone with a car and a motive, the way Walker and Togusa do.

It’s been a while since we checked in on the three ‘main’ cast members (though, as always, Narita insists the star of Durarara!! is Celty). Mikado continues his downward slide, though at least we see he hasn’t gone full villain when he gets totally terrified on meeting Akabayashi. It’s hard to sympathize with Mikado, and I get the feeling that if he admits that he’s doing this so that he can feel excitement and be “special”, he’ll have lost. So he blunders on, not really caring that Aoba is just using him. Masaomi seems to be thinking that the best way to get through to Mikado is to kick the crap out of him till he’s a sweet boy again, and has mobilized the Yellow Squares to do this. As for Anri, all she wants is for things to go back to where they were so the three of them can have their talk. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, and I suspect the presence of two other Saikas will goad her into more definitive action next time.

So the pot is still simmering, but the stew inside it is smelling even more delicious. DRRR!! proper ends with the 13th book (please don’t ask about SH yet, I beg of you), so we’ll see how much more setup can be forced in before Narita simply has to serve it all up.

Teasing Master Takagi-san, Vol. 1

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By Soichiro Yamamoto. Released in Japan as “Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san” by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Gessan. Released in North America by Yen Press.

It’s a cliche, and a controversial one these days: “Boys just tease the girls because they like them”. And so naturally some enterprising young manga artist wondered, “what would happen if the genders were reversed?”. Well, as it turns out, it’s adorable. The premise here is that Nishikata is a desperately over-earnest young man with a propensity for blushing at anything who is trying desperately to prank his classmate Takagi-san, who sits next to him in class. The trouble is, he’s pretty easy to read. Also, he can’t keep his emotions in check. He’s also far too nice to seriously prank anyone. But mostly he fails because Takagi-san is simply too good at it. In a contest of who can make the over blush first, she wins every single time. Fortunately, all she asks for (mostly) is that he react the way he does. What we have here is My Neighbor Seki if there actually was any romantic tension between the two leads.

There is a certain risk here, which I think the author knows. Takagi-san’s teasing has to go so far and no farther, i.e. she can’t just be mean. You can argue she gets Nishikata in trouble with the teacher, but honestly that’s mostly his own inability to keep himself grounded. We also see her lay off when she thinks that he’s genuinely sick – something which actually seems to bother him. The reason that this sort of thing is all acceptable is that it’s clear that Takagi-san is over the moon for Nishikata. Indeed, her teasing in the final chapter of this volume relies on her being able to lie when she tells him “secretly” that she likes him – because the lie is that’s it’s secret. Others in the classroom wonder if they’re a couple already, and were this a traditional romance manga I bet the guys would be jealous of the “lucky bastard”. We’re meant to see this as courtship – and yes, it does work mostly because the genders are reserved.

The manga ran for about three years in “Gessan Mini” before moving to the main magazine, and the first volume’s chapters do seem to be the sort that can be enjoyed in any order and whether you know the characters or not. The teasing ranges from typical middle-school stuff (making funny faces, tossing aluminum cans) to more personal things (why Takagi-san isn’t swimming in PE today, sharing an umbrella in the rain). Throughout it all, Nishikata remains 100% oblivious to any affection that Takagi-san may have for him, and the one time that he does seem to get it when she tells him directly, she backs off. You get the sense she wants him to figure his feelings out first. You also get the sense there’s no real rush. They’re only middle-schoolers, so she has all the time in the world to watch his face.

The series had a recent anime (which is likely why it moved to the main magazine), so readers may go in knowing what’s going to happen to a degree. Don’t let that stop you from getting this. The pacing is excellent, and the characters are cute. Nishikata is the hero, but you get the sense that if he ever won the manga would end, so you’re rooting for Takagi-san. Mostly as those faces ARE pretty adorable.