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Silver Spoon, Vol. 9

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By Hiromu Arakawa. Released in Japan as “Gin no Saji” by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Amanda Haley.

What I said about farming last time goes double for this volume, as there’s a pile of new information here about pigs, horses and everything in between. The pigs are getting ready to be butchered, and this time the entire school pools its money together to buy three of them. Despite having raised them from little piglets, this time around Hachiken is going to see Bacon’s journey all the way through to… well, bacon. As such, we get a very detailed observation of a pig butchering, so a word of warning for those of you who are squeamish. It is quite interesting, though, and long exposure to the procedure shows all the kids bouncing ideas off each other at a very fast pace (for future selling, etc.) – something that the teachers credit Hachiken for, as his ignorance in farm matters but raging curiosity leads the other kids to think of things they may not have otherwise.

We’ve been watching Hachiken grow over the course of this series, and this volume is excellent at showing the reader how far he’s come and showing him how far he still needs to go. In order to help Mikage study, he breaks down and asks his brother for help, and finds out his study guide notes are his for the taking – provided he goes back home to get them, as he left them in his old room. (In the interim, Shingo has somehow gotten married to a Russian woman, on the spur of the moment, showing again how different he and Hachiken are.) Hachiken’s return at first impresses us – his old middle school classmates note his new abilities and relaxed countenance, even as they get fake angry when they hear there are girls he speaks to. Sadly, going home means another fight with his father, one where Hachiken for once does not back down and defends what he sees as his Dad berating his classmates. It’s a great scene, and leads to his mother journeying up to the school herself to see what Hachiken is doing there.

He’s also tutoring Mikage, and tutoring is all it is, much to the frustration of her friends and the joy of his. (The frustrating of teenage hormones is a constant refrain in this manga, usually used to make things more lighthearted.) Mikage is trying, but there’s no miracle cure – no matter how much Hachiken breaks it down into horse anecdotes, this is going to be hard for her. (I laughed when the group suggested he become a teacher, and Mikage correctly pointed out he would die trying to help each student at maximum power.) There’s no turning back now, though, especially since her parents are selling some of the horses to help pay for her to go to college. The need for money is a constant theme of this series, which is also why it’s so jarring when Hachiken asks his father about any debt they may have, and finds that he is far better off than everyone else – they’ve even saved for his college. His is not a farming family. (Hachiken is also savvy enough to realize that he needs a real accountant for their growing business translations, and turning to Tamako was very smart of him.)

Can Mikage get into college? Can she afford to? Can she and Hachiken admit their feelings to each other without their parents or male classmates killing him? Can Shingo survive telling his parents he has a new Russian bride? Can Valentine’s Day be the celebration that Christmas absolutely wasn’t? These questions and many others will be answered in the next volume of Silver Spoon.

Restaurant to Another World, Vol. 2

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By Junpei Inuzuka and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan as “Isekai Shokudou” by Shufunotomosha. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Elliot Ryouga. Adapted by Nino Cipri.

I admit that I worried, given the basic content on this series, whether I’d be able to write a full review of any further volumes. It’s not quite true to say there’s still no plot – there is one, barely – or characterization – that’s half the reason to read this – but the reason to get this series is still “I like to read about people eating food and discussing how delicious it is”, and that is what you get. Some of our regulars are back for new chapters, we get some new regulars (though the other waitress from the anime, Kuro, is still absent) and some new dishes. We also hear more about how the food from the Restaurant is beginning to seriously affect the fantasy world it interacts with, as more and more people are not content with waiting seven days but want to try and recreate a bit of what they’ve experienced. The setting may be RPG fantasy, but the food is slowly leveling up.

We do find out a bit more about Aletta, the demon girl who showed up and was hired as a waitress at the end of the first volume. As a waitress, she’s mostly invisible, which is expected given the nature of the chapters – she’s not there to talk about the food, the customers are after she serves them. But we do see some chapters devoted specifically to her – her amazement at the modern-day soap and shampoo that she gets from the still unnamed Master, her reluctance to eat potatoes after having to subsist on only them for so long, and her eventual job as housekeeper for Sarah, the adventurer whose story opened the first book, who doesn’t care that she’s a demon and is happy to have someone take care of things while she’s away. She’s also a good shill for cookies.

Elsewhere, the food company heir brings along his most trusted employee to try to recreate the pizza he’s served by the restaurant; some fairies who are very wary of the door experience some delicious crepes that change their mind (though I disagree with their saying only sweet crepes are good); a demon with the head of a lion tells us about nearly dying in the arena as a gladiator before the restaurant gave him some much needed strength (via katsudon, of course). There’s one chapter that has a predictable but utterly welcome fakeout. In fact, a lot of the series feels like comfort food to me in general. You’re not getting any surprises here – the dwarfs say “By my axe!”, because that’s what fantasy dwarfs do. Likewise, the elves are somewhat prissy, the princesses regal yet cute, etc. The menu doesn’t change, but it’s delicious to read.

The cover of the third volume suggests we’ll meet our new waitress soon, so there may be more plot on the way there. But if it’s descriptions of food and drink you want, both Western *and* Eastern, you acn’t go wrong with this series.

Little Miss P

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By Ken Koyama. Released in Japan as “Seiri-chan” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Taylor Engel.

I will admit that of all the surprising licenses that I saw Yen announce at Anime NYC, this was probably the most surprising. Mr. Men and Little Miss have been around forever, and I have seen pastiches of them before (see the Doctor Who series that came out recently). And Japan has anthropomorphized seemingly everything, from battleships to countries. So the concept should not be that startling, but somehow the idea of a giant period wandering around punching women when it’s that time of the month still made me blink. But, having finished this volume (complete in one, I believe), it’s actually handled pretty well. While there’s humor involved, the humor is more subdued than I expected, and Little Miss P tends to be a lot more sympathetic than you’d expect given that they’re punching women all the tie and taking their blood. It’s a manga that’s trying to show off what happens to women every month, how it can vary from person to person, and how to cope with it.

The book is divided into chapters, each one dealing with a different woman and their encounters with Little Miss P, a walking, talking period. Little Miss P shows up when it’s that time of the month, punches them in the uterus, draws their blood with a giant syringe, and then usually stays around to chat now that the woman in each chapter is feeling miserable. We see a housewife who’s been trying to get pregnant, a convenience store clerk with low self-esteem, two magical girls (one of the more bizarre chapters, but it does show off how different women can have different types of periods), etc. We go back to the Edo Period, when menstruating women had to go sleep in a shed apart from their home; meet two high school drama geeks who bodyswap so each can see how the other half lives; and watch a woman in a new relationship try to bond with the man’s young daughter, who’s just gotten her first period.

The best story is probably the last one, which shows a “fictionalized” version of how Japan first brought out disposable sanitary napkins, showing the woman behind it fighting against men who don’t want to fund it because it’s not something they care about. There’s a lot of analysis of how the marketing was handled, and how careful everyone had to be to make it accessible but not offensive. It was really good. On the downside, while I was entertained by Little Miss P, and certainly the use of the character made this more marketable than simply “a short story collection about various women and their periods” would have been, sometimes it was a bit annoying. And adding the male versions, with Mr. Libido and Mr. Virginity, fell completely flat for me, with the exception of the bodyswap chapter, where it actually worked in context.

I wouldn’t pick this up for the concept – a little Little Miss P goes a long way. But for a series of short stories about women dealing with that time of the month, it was very readable.