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An Invitation from a Crab

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By panpanya. Released in Japan as “Kani ni Sasowarete” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Rakuen Le Paradis. Released in North America by Denpa Books. Translated by Ko Ransom.

Iev always been a fan of those sketchy, semi-slice of life (except they’re too weird) manga that you see towards the back of a lot of seinen and josei manga magazines. It used to be that the chances of such works getting licensed over here was nil, but Denpa has quite a few eclectic titles coming out now, and An Invitation from a Crab is one of the first. It’s more of a collection of interconnected short stories, along with the occasional essay discussing the importance of paying attention to things. Our unnamed heroine is theoretically a high school student, and occasionally we do see her in class. But the world she’s in is not quite the same as ours, featuring normal humans but also animal-headed people, as well as the bizarre lemon with an eye that seems to be a ‘boss’ sort of type. Essentially, An Invitation from a Crab is a “what kind of stories will the author spin next?’ sort of book. And they’re good stories.

The stories here range from a few pages long to larger chunky narratives. The title comes from the first story, where our heroine follows a crab that is lying in the road and seems to know where it’s going. That said, the “punchline”, as it were, amounts to not much, and that’s also the case with most of the rest of these stories. You’re reading this for mood, not for jokes or characterization, and so frequently the stories feel like “shaggy dog” stories, where the ending does not justify the effort expended. Which is absolutely fine given much of this is about enjoying the journey. We see our heroine wearing a Chinese communist outfit in a factory breaking coconuts so they can be used to create electricity. That is a sentence I can’t believe I just typed, and it’s probably the weirdest of the stories in here, but there’s other dreamlike sequences as well, including one that literally is a dream, where our heroine’s spirit gets off a train but her body doesn’t.

There is quite a bit of humor here, despite my saying earlier that there weren’t punchlines per se. Sometimes simply seeing the situation makes me laugh, such as our heroine and her dog/roommate/whatever searching to try to find anyone who knows where pineapples come from, or the heroine gleefully preparing for her Sunday day off by doing piles of things (this reminded me of the Zetsubou-sensei chapter where the class had a “preview” of their field trip). And sometimes the mood can be disturbing – there’s a lot of dark shadows in this world, and while the coconut and lost body stories are not dark in any way, they’re unsettling and have a sense of unreality to them. Even some of the shorter stories in the volume, such as when our heroine is sold a giant salamander and tries to return him to the Amazon (a plot that lifts directly from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon), has an ominous feel to its humorous ending.

If you’re interested in a skewed look at life in a world that’s not quite this one, or wonder what it would be like if you did follow that crab into the side alley, you should definitely pick this up.

Accel World: Snow White’s Slumber

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By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

I was a little grumpy with the last volume of Accel World. After feeling that the Armor of Catastrophe arc went on far too long (a fact the author also agreed with me on), seeing it return as a Mark II made me slap my hand to my forehead. Fortunately, we were near the end of this arc when it appeared, and so it’s taken care of in one volume, though not without considerable sacrifice. More importantly, there’s a lot of really interesting discussion about the nature of Accel World in general, as well as its forbears. Striving for a meaning and purpose in life is something we see a lot of in the real world, but in the Accel World, the meaning and purpose of life may actually be a tangible thing, given that it was created. What’s more, the nature of Metatron reminds me very much of the nature of Kizmel in Sword Art Online; a sense of “these supposed NPCs have gone way beyond what everyone thought they would do’.

A lot of this volume, given that Haruyuki is separated from Kuroyukihime, focuses on the relationship between him and Metatron, who would likely have risen up fairly high on the list of ‘harem candidates’ were it not for the events later in the book, and even so the epilogue shows there may be hope. I admit I could have done without the “I speak like a tsundere princess” thing, but I really did like the discussion they had, which also shows how clever Haruyuki is, piecing together stuff that’s been bubbling around inside his head for the last 15 volumes or so. She also gives him the strength to finish off the bad guys before they get even more powerful, and (hopefully) get ris of the ISS kits making everyone lose it in the real world as well, though that last part remains to be seen. Everyone else got a lot of good stuff to do as well, and there was some nice development of Nico, who gets her armor back… mostly. There’s even a heartwarming festival to end things!

Except that what most everyone will be talking about is the arrival of White Cosmos, the White King who we’d never seen before, the power behind the Accelerated Research Society, and Kuroyukihime’s real-life sister. Given this is a Kawahara villain, it’s no real surprise that her goal appears to be to drive everyone in the game to total despair. Subtlety is not why you read this author. I suspect that she’s mostly going to be used to drive character development for Kuroyukihime, who wisely (and with Haruyuki’s help) chooses not to fight her just now. And of course to contrast the ‘girl shrouded in black who’s really kind vs. girl who looks white and kind but is secretly manipulative and awful’. Again, subtlety is not on display here. But it makes for a nice, dramatic scene, and would look pretty cool animated.

Given that we’ve wrapped up a long arc here, I would not be surprised if the next volume is lighter in tone. In the meantime, fans of the series shold enjoy this new volume, especially the talk between Haruyuki and Metatron.

After the Rain, Vol. 2

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By Jun Mayuzuki. Released in Japan as “Koi wa Ameagari no You ni” in two separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Big Comic Spirits. Released in North America by Vertical Comics. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

As you might imagine given the title of the series is After the Rain, it rains an awful lot in this manga. This not only creates an appropriate atmosphere, but allows both of its protagonists to come down with bad colds. This causes both Akira and Kondo to lose control of their emotions a bit, allowing suppressed feelings to boil over – nothing going beyond hugging, mind you. No one is quite ready for this relationship to advance that far yet. (Well, Akira may want it to – her fantasies when she’s in bed with a cold verge close to a masturbatory scene.) Plus both Akira and Kondo have things in their life they need to work out first. Akira is still trying to untie herself from her previous track team life, despite her friend Haruka insisting they can still be friends. And Kondo has a hidden side – he writes. But doesn’t want anyone to find out about it.

It’s no coincidence that both of these plotlines resemble each other – our leads are very much alike despite the age difference. Akira is determined to move on from her injury, but feels like the only way she can do that is by completely cutting out that part of her life. This naturally upsets Haruka, who is reduced to tears hearing Akira essentially deny everything they had. As for Kondo, seeing Akira recommend a book by his college friend Chihiro brings up old memories, and causes him to reunite with said friend and discuss their old literature club, which also apparently had his ex-wife in it. The reunion allows him to give advice to Akira on her fight, which is, essentially, “even if you do never speak again, this will not change the precious moments you once had with each other”. Which is good, if non-confrontational, advice – I’m sort of rooting for Haruka here.

We also meet Akira’s father in this volume (complete with a great “stop telling people I’m dead!” joke), which is good, because it shows us that her dad really isn’t much like Kondo at all. (So he’s not a replacement father figure, which I was fearing.) She’s also a lot more outgoing with her dad, sort of like the flashbacks of her and Haruka that we see before the accident. Like most high school kids, she’s ready to grow up and be taken seriously as an adult, and is frustrated by people who still want to treat her as a kid – not realizing that the reason they’re doing it so much is they know they don’t have much time left to pamper her. She’s almost an adult, but you want to stop time just so that you can still have her need you in the same way. It amounted to my favorite chapter in the book.

This story continues to be a sweet, slow burn, and my misgivings about the May-December romance have faded a bit. More to the point, I just like the writing of the characters. Even if the romance doesn’t happen, I want to see what happens next in their life anyway.