Category Archives: reviews

Toradora!, Vol. 8

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By Yuyuko Takemiya and Yasu. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Will Holcomb.

Last time everything was terrible, and I asked is some of that could be fixed by the end of this book. The answer is mostly no, though we do get one major revelation that I expect will eventually lead to the endgame. Till then, though… this was a good volume, with lots of relatable teenage angst, but I have to admit that it feels very much like an author being told to stretch out a series to a nice round ten books and therefore just having everything continue to disintegrate. Minori in particular is still making all the wrong choices, trying to pretend that everything between her and Ryuuji is still exactly the same. Sadly, she’s much better at pretending than he is, so he assumes that his almost-confession meant nothing to her. Ami calls her out on her bullshit, which leads to a major fight between them. And then there’s the ending of the book, which I’ll get into later but leaves Minori sobbing alone in a corner. This is not a wacky fun Toradora! volume.

The tone of the book is set up right off the bat, as the much-awaited trip to Okinawa is cancelled when the hotel they were supposed to stay in burns down. As such, the class trip is a much shorter skiing trip, which pleases absolutely no one. As for Ryuuji, he’s still devastated by events of the previous book, and only JUST manages to get back to himself by halfway through the book. This thankfully allows for the brief bit of comedy we get – the tracksuit outfits picked out for the class are deliberately tacky and awful, and there’s various “Ryuuji and Taiga can’t ski” jokes that are a lot of fun – at least till the end. The main plotline remains the love septangle going on. Taiga is trying to distance herself from Ryuuji, and has also gone so far as to give Minori the hairclip Ryuuji was going to give her. She’s really pushing Ryuuji/Minorin hard. As for her crush on Kitamura, well…

As with the previous book, events in the last twenty pages of the volume almost consume everything else. After another fight, Taiga ends up disappearing off a cliff, and Ryuuji is the one to go down and rescue her. Unfortunately, Taiga, who is groggy from concussion and blood loss from the fall, sees Ryuuji’s goggles and thinks it’s Kitamura. We’ve heard that Taiga and Kitamura had a talk at New Year’s (which Ryuuji, in the hospital with flu, missed) and now we get the pretty obvious answer of what it was about – Taiga is incredibly devastated that despite her best efforts, she still loves Ryuuji. Naturally, she’s unaware she’s telling this TO Ryuuji. It’s so sweet and sad and heartwarming and terrible all at once, and I do feel that Ryuuji made the right choice for the moment of pretending that he was not her rescuer, but this isn’t going to go away.

If you like Toradora! and its teen comedy-drama, this one is almost all drama, but should definitely appeal. Next time, one hopes, Minori will finally open up, but I suspect nothing will really be resolved until the final volume.

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 27

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

Another “short-story” volume of Rokujouma, although honestly it’s more three short stories and a half-novel, as the story written especially for the book is a continuation of the previous book and not really skippable. The three short stories are all essentially character pieces. The first focuses on Nana, who has been slowly drawn into the secondary orbit of the main cast, although she’s not in the Koutarou sweepstakes. It involves making changes to her mostly cyborg body to have her look more of her actual age… as well as various other members of the cast envying how Koutarou interacts with each of them. The slightest of the three stories has Shizuka and her “dragon” uncle going to a hot springs. The third involves an eating contest that all the cast enters, but it’s mostly about Sanae and Theia, along with making Yurika the butt monkey again, because, well, we’re back on Earth. All three stories are the same as we’ve seen in previous volumes – nice character pieces, but slight.

The final story is more significant, and starts with an obvious problem: Koutarou being on Forthorthe is ruining the economy, as anywhere he goes is automatically where everyone else wants to go, and everything he buys, everyone else does… meaning all the competitors are being ruined. This is a tad ridiculous, but serves to give him an excuse to quietly go back home with everyone except the main Forthorthe cast. That said, they’ve been away from Earth a LONG time. Various people on the magical girl side have been pretending to be them in class, but that’s not helping their actual studies, so they have to take a test to prove that they’re up to date… and failure means repeating a year. You can imagine who panics most about this, but Sanae and Koutarou are also not great students.

Now, I will partly hand it to Yurika, despite whining and moaning the entire time, she really did seem to earnestly study. That said, I do like how this book shows that all the studying effort in the world can’t help you when you start from so far behind. I also liked how Maki kept Yurika motivated – yes, Koutarou would still let her stay there if she had to repeat a year, but he’s be so disappointed… as you can imagine, the thought horrifies Yurika. The other main plot here involves the cast being followed around by various guys in suits and sunglasses who look straight out of Urusei Yatsura. This was amusing, but feels more like a setup for next book, where I expect Forthorthe is going to have to go public. In fact, the author said there’s a lot of setup for the next book in this story.

So overall not bad, and sets us up nicely for the next two books, which are the final ones in the “main” storyline, though the series continues after that. Rokujouma fans should be happy.

Baccano!: 2002 [Side A]: Bullet Garden

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By Ryohgo Narita and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel.

The first volume of this two-parter reminds me very much of the fist volume of the last two-parter we had, The Slash. It’s very short, almost all setup, and seems to be saving all its tricks for the back half. It also features a new character I don’t care for, and once again brings up Firo’s paralyzing fear of sexuality, which is not a plotline I like either. Adding this all together makes it one of the more “average” volumes in the series, and it feels sort of like the first volume in a DRRR!! arc as well – you’re reading along waiting for fun, only to be told the fun is four months from now. Fortunately, there is a BIT of fun to be had here – Claudia and Charon *are* new characters I like, being genderswapped carbon copies of their great-grandparents, Czes gets a lot to do an an ominous foreboding about what’s going to happen, and Illness is a treat, though her terrifying backstory reminds me of Huey and Elmer – deliberately, of course.

Firo and Ennis, we are told, married somewhere around 1980, fifty years after they first met, but have never had a honeymoon – or indeed consummated their relationship. On finding out about this, the Camorra bosses pay for him and Ennis to travel on an ocean liner’s maiden voyage – and, Firo still being extremely wary of what comes with a honeymoon, he invites Czes to come as well, much to Czes’s frustration. The cruise also features Claudia and Charon, great-grandkids to Claire and Chane (who, while not immortal, are both still alive and active in their nineties), who are in the film industry; Angelo, a sniper who is out for revenge on the terrorists who wiped out his South American gang; said terrorists, the Mask Makers, whose name seems awfully familiar to Firo and who have a love of modern cinema; and Bobby Splot and his gang, who stow away on the boat to get revenge on people because… well, because Bobby is terrible. He’s a disgrace to his great-grandfather Jacuzzi.

I am aware that Bobby will likely improve in the next book, but, like Maria in the first Slash volume, I have to rate him based on this book alone, and boy, he grates. To be fair, this is deliberate, as the book wants to have him NOT be his great-grandfather, in contrast to Claudia, but still. The plotline going on here seems complex, and you get the sense that we’ve barely seen the start of it. Someone seems to want to recreate the 1931 train incident, only without Isaac and Miria (who briefly appear, but are not on the boat). The Mask Makers are clearly a reference to the same group we saw in the 1705 novel, which makes you wonder what they’re doing here almost 300 years later. And, to make things even more interesting, the terrorists’ plan involves meeting up with the SISTER ship of this huge luxury liner, which is going in the other direction and scheduled to pass them.

We briefly hear what’s happening on the other liner, and honestly it sounds a lot more interesting than events here. As such, I suspect that the 2nd and final book in this 2002 arc will be far more exciting and interesting. Till then, enjoy Claudia, Charon and Illness, who are a lot of fun.