Yearly Archives: 2018

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Vol. 1

Leave a reply

By Aka Akasaka. Released in Japan as “Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai〜Tensei-tachi no Renai Zunō-sen〜” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Young Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Emi Louie-Nishikawa. Adapted by Annette Roman.

If you have ever stared at a couple on stage, screen, or the page and screamed “Oh my God, just kiss already!”, then this is the manga for you. In fact, one could argue that’s the entire premise. The literal title of the series is “Kaguya-sama Wants to Be Confessed To: The Geniuses’ War between Love and Brains”. That’s quite a mouthful, you can see why it got condensed. It runs in Weekly Young Jump, a magazine usually known (at least over here) for more “upscale” series such as Real, Golden Kamuy, and Tokyo Ghoul. This got branded with the Shonen Jump titles, though, and it’s a good decision, as at heart this is a high school comedy, and would not be out of place among the Nisekois and Sket Dances of the world. As for why you should read it? Well, it’s really entertaining and funny. Reason enough for anyone.

Our heroine is Kaguya Shinomiya, a rich heiress who is also vice president of the student council at Shuchiin Academy. Our hero is Miyuki Shirogane, who’s not rich but who’s at the academy due to his intelligence. He’s the President. Together, they are both seemingly perfect… and you know what that means in a comedy manga. Yup, they’re both perfect messes. The entire school already thinks they’re a couple. They aren’t, but that’s entirely due to pride – we find in the first chapter that both consider “whoever confesses first is the loser” to be the order of the day. As a result, the manga, at least in this early volume, amounts to a series of pranks, as both Kaguya and Miyuki attempt to be the one to force the other to confess their love… at which point, of course, they will accept with a smirk on their face. (Indeed, Miyuki imagining Kaguya’s sneering victory smirk as she towers over him gives us some of the funniest images of the book.)

It helps that, even though they’re both prideful as hell, these are both nice kids at heart. Kaguya is the very definition of a sheltered princess, and even things like going to the movies baffle her. Miyuki is seemingly a bit more together, but his paranoid imaginings about what Kaguya’s real plan is trip him up constantly (it doesn’t help that half the time his paranoia is justified.) The only other regular in this first book is Chika, who is nice and seemingly completely oblivious to the affection war between Kaguya and Miyuki. I like her, particularly as I suspect even if she knew about it she’d act exactly the same. She’s Kaguya’s childhood friend, though Kaguya is so poker-faced and bad at socialization that you’d never know it, as the author admits.

The author states that it’s not guaranteed that the two of them will get together in the end, which I think is ridiculous, but it’s certainly guaranteed they won’t be getting together anytime soon, as this series is eight volumes and counting in Japan. Still, I’m certainly happy to keep reading about these two perfect dorks and their battle to one-up each other, and I’m hoping that we get a few heartwarming moments along the way. For now, though, the comedy is the reason to get this.

Nekomonogatari: Cat Tale (White)

Leave a reply

By NISIOISIN. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc. Translated by Ko Ransom.

This is the first volume of the Monogatari Series not to be narrated from the POV of Koyomi Araragi, and it makes a difference, although not as much as you might expect. Tsubasa Hanekawa is our narrator, and therefore the narrative is every bit as analytical and over-verbose as ever (given the actual author of the works, this is likely unavoidable). But there’s a certain sleaziness we’ve gotten used to with Araragi that is mostly absent here, despite Senjogahara’s best efforts to keep it around. We also get to see Hanekawa come to some critical realizations about herself. If Tsubasa Cat was about the reader seeing how messed up Hanekawa is, and Nekomonogatari Black was about Araragi seeing it, then this book is the finale, as Hanekawa has to finally realize what she’s really like and take steps to change it. And given that there’s a part of Hanekawa that wants to just sit back and let the world burn – quite literally – this is a tall order.

Despite the absence of Araragi’s narrative from the volume (indeed, Araragi himself doesn’t even show up until the climax), there are many familiar things going on here. There is a certain metatextual fourth wall breaking throughout, from Hachikuji cheerfully telling the reader that the next book will be about her (true, though also false – see the Kabukimonogatari review in 2 months) to Hanekawa noticing that there are missing chapters as the book goes on. There’s also a large amount of funny banter, mainly due to the burgeoning friendship of Hanekawa and Senjogahara. Senjogahara has become far more open since the series began, something Hanekawa herself observes, and almost takes on Araragi’s role here, flirting with Hanekawa constantly and at one point showering together with her. (One senses Nisioisin is now writing this knowing there will be an anime.) There’s also some unintentionally dark humor, such as Hanekawa blithely deciding to sleep in the abandoned cram school with cardboard boxes for bedding – her matter-of-fact narration of this is painful and hysterical.

The main thrust of the book is a new aberration, a large Tiger that is seemingly burning to the ground places Hanekawa has just slept – first the house she lives in with her “parents”, then the cram school itself. In reality, things are a bit more complicated, and it should not surprise any regular readers of the series to know that this aberration is more about Hanekawa’s repressed emotions – in this case, her envy of what it means to have a happy family. Deciding to stop pushing all of her negative emotions onto aberrations and simply deal with them instead is admirable, but it has to come at a cost, and in this case it’s finally confessing to, and getting rejected by, Araragi, which allows her to cry for possibly the first time in her entire life. This is the final volume of Hanekawa’s main story arc, and it’s a very good ending, even if she’s not leaving the main story just yet.

For anime fans, there are a lot of reasons to get this book. The uncut version of longer monologues provides greater depth of feeling – Hanekawa is allowed to outright state that her parents are abusive, and she also admits to herself that she’s fallen for Senjogahara too, but of course simply cannot get in the way of her relationship with Araragi. (OT3 fans will be both happy and sad, I expect.) And of course there is the usual good reason to get the books, which is to wallow in Nisioisin’s idiosyncratic prose, which may come from Hanekawa’s POV but is still present and correct. If you like Monogatari in general and Tsubasa Hanekawa in particular, this volume is essential.

Voices of a Distant Star

Leave a reply

By Makoto Shinkai and Mizu Sahara. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Vertical Comics. Translated by Melissa Tanaka.

Of the various horrifying secrets I have, “has never seen a Makoto Shinkai anime” surely must rank among the largest. But it’s true. I’ve gradually stopped watching a lot of anime anyway, and what I do watch does not tend to fall into the introspective mode that Shinkai does so well. So, just like your name and The Garden of Words, I am coming into reading Voices of a Distant Star as someone unfamiliar with the original anime. Indeed, I never read the manga when it came out from Tokyopop back in 2006. But now I have read it and, as with most things Shinkai has been in charge of, I’m glad I did. The plot is slight, and the characters fairly easy to understand. but that’s because it’s going for a feeling that most of us know only too well, even if it’s couching it in the language of science fiction and time dilation.

We open on two middle school friends who clearly want to be more than friends. There’s just one problem. One of them has been chosen to go into space to help fight aliens, meaning they’ll be separated. But that’s OK – they have email! Unfortunately, this is a more realistic version of space travel, meaning that as time passes and the interstellar distances get longer, the communication gets leagues more difficult. Can their budding love stand the test of both time and space? Now, of course, what makes this even more interesting is that the pilot who’s been recruited is the girl, Mikako, and it’s her friend Noboru who’s staying behind on Earth, trying to live the live that she wanted to live and figure out what he wants to do next. Mikako gets a lot more to do, meeting fellow pilots, then losing them just as quickly, and also discovering the crushing loneliness that comes from a mission like this. Is this another Shinkai title with a bittersweet ending?

Well, no, it gets to be more sweet than bitter, though as you might expect the emphasis is on the ambiguity. In fact, from what I understand the manga actually made things clearer and more explicit (the manga seems to have expanded things a lot from the original anime, which was quite short). This is a one-volume manga, and it’s just the right length to let readers feel the ache of the story it’s telling without wallowing too much in it. The emotions are what we’re here for, adn they’re excellent. Noboru’s most stoic endurance cracking near the end, and Mikako’s love seemingly growing stronger the farther away from him she gets. I will admit that I wasn’t thrilled with the alien invasion subplot, which felt more like an excuse to put some action – any action – in a story that could just as easily have been about Mikako on a space exploration flight.

This is a quiet, emotionally devastating but ultimately uplifting story, and you really like the two kids even when they’re questioning themselves and their own feelings. It’s well worth the read.