Category Archives: reviews

Invaders of the Rokujouma!?, Vol. 15

Leave a reply

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

The basic premise of this series is that all the many and varied girls who have their eye on Room 106 get together with Koutarou to form a family (yes, they all love each other romantically, but “family” is the first thing that comes to mind to describe themselves, and the reader has to agree). And they’re all beset by various types of villains. So it makes a certain amount of sense that the villains are also joining forces in order to fight our heroes. Of course, unlike Koutarou’s group, this is not a particularly equal partnership. Radical Faction leader Tayuma is a classic laughing villain sort, and you expect he’s going to get taken out in the following volume (this volume) is the first of a two-parter) and then quietly forgotten about. But the pairing of Elexis, Theia’s nemesis, and Maya, the Dark Magical Girl, looks more long-lasting, and there’s also some potential romance there. Yes, villains can hook up, too!

As for our “family”, they’re still getting along well. One thing that’s interesting about Rokujouma is the utter lack of inter-harem conflict compared to most series of this ilk. You don’t even have any scenes of people temporarily walking out in an angry huff. (Where would they go, they all live in the apartment.) It can lead to being a bit self-satisfied, as I noted in my previous review, but it’s also sweet and cute, which is what the author is going for, I’m sure. This group is very much still in the initial blush of first love, and it shows in their actions. Koutarou is getting more comfortable with showing physical affection top people not named Yurika, and the other girls are getting better about asking for it. They’re slowly maturing, and yes, that includes Yurika, even though she seems designed to always be whining and complaini9ng because, well, the author loves writing that.

The main plot of this volume involves our heroes teaming up with the sentai group from like 10 volumes ago (remember them? Yeah, me neither…) to take on the Radical Faction’s attempt at causing a natural disaster so great it will allow them to take over the surface once and for all. It’s a total “evil villain” scheme, but it’s treated seriously because of Kiriha, and because the others discuss the actual consequences of such a thing. One reason I enjoy reading Rokujouma so much is the amount of dialogue going on – now that everyone’s mostly revealed their true background and desires, they’re not hiding anything from each other and can be open and direct. Which I’m sure will lead to better solutions in the next volume. They’re not perfect – they were truly suckered in in the last third of the book, and now the bad guys have a better idea of how to fight Koutarou and company – but they’ll come up with something.

This is a short book in the series, and didn’t take long to get through. Fans of Rokujouma!? should enjoy it quite a bit.

The Saga of Tanya the Evil: The Finest Hour

Leave a reply

By Carlo Zen and Shinobu Shinotsuki. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

As has been noted before, Tanya the Evil’s world is essentially an odd mashup of World War I Europe, with appropriate touchstones. That said, it’s perfectly content to mess with the timeline in order to move things along, and the third volume does this incredibly quickly, moving from World War I to World War II in the space of about three months. The victor may have changed, but the players are much the same, though we do get a few new – and more obviously inspired by real life history – characters. The “Duke of Marlborough” is Winston Churchill, complete with color illustration in case we didn’t get it (not to mention the subtitle of the book), and Tanya’s new commander in the African – sorry, Southern Colonies is “von Romel”, which is almost TOO on the nose. And of course there’s Tanya and her crew, who manage to almost single-handedly win the war only to see peace remain elusive. In fact, Tanya’s desperate plea to let her unit stop the Republic from getting away is probably the highlight of the entire book.

We begin with a giant slaughter, as is usually the case in these novels that make no bones about war being hell – at least for Tanya’s opponents. She and the 203rd are literally shot at the enemy on giant rockets, and they proceed to lay waste to most of the republic’s main forces as well as their HQ. It is amusing to see Tanya’s constant cynical, worried POV as the group essentially walks in and walks right back out almost unharmed. There are times when she is unaware of how good she is. So all that remains is to sign a peace treaty and negotiate the end of the war… something not done by the military, alas. The cease fire allows the Republic to regroup and the Commonwealth to stop pretending they don’t care, and thus everything is for naught. As for Tanya, she regards being sent south as a punishment for her freak out at the generals, but when we see them scheming it, it’s more that they just don’t have any real resources, so need to use the 203rd to have any chance of doing anything. The Empire is running out of money and resources.

And we may be getting a new player into the game. The Unified States have been mostly neutral here, but they also have Mary Sue, the daughter of Anson Sue, who Tanya fought and killed back in the previous book. Mary is unaware of this, but she is extremely patriotic and also has a buttload of magical talent, so is ready to fight and die for her country. In terms of the series, she promises to be something of a rival to Tanya, which is good as lately there has been the sense that nothing can stop Tanya once she gets going. It will be nice to see her have a bit of a challenge. Mary Sue seems sweet, but given that we already have the ‘sweet girl’ card in this deck with Visha, I suspect that won’t last long. The illustrations also make her look a bit possessed, to be honest.

Tanya the Evil is still wordy as all get out, and I’d honestly only recommend it if you’ve read military biographies and histories before. But if you want to know what happens after the anime ended, this is the volume to start with, as the anime wraps up about 3/4 through this book. I’m still waiting to see how all this turns out.

Black Torch, Vol. 1

1 Reply

By Tsuyoshi Takaki. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Jump Square. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Toshikazu Aizawa and Colin Leigh.

A lot of the first volume of this new Jump series looks like a prologue, because in a sense it is. In fact, I’d argue that it might have worked better if it were done as a flashback after a few chapters featuring the titular special unit that our hero ends up getting drafted into. As it is, I enjoyed this volume but I’m left a bit dissatisfied as it feels like the story hasn’t quite started yet. There is a bit going on here to make folks want to read more, though. Jiro is somewhat standard Jump style, but “can talk to animals and is also a ninja” is a pretty good starting point, even if he does end the first chapter with a giant hole in his chest. There’s also Ichika, who manages to deal with a “I hate people who belittle me because I’m a woman scene” with her dignity mostly intact, which always pleases me.

We not only have ninjas here but also Mononokes, which seems to be sort of animal demons. Jiro rescues a small cat who turns out to be one of these, and also the only one in the series to date who’s not evil. Unfortunately, when you team up with the one “not evil” monster, you get hard looks from the team hired to take out monsters, which includes grumpy Ichika and her boss, the Captain Gotoh-esque Shiba. They’re the Oniwabanshu of legendary historical fame, now busy being bodyguards and also hunting down these monsters, which have recently popped back up. After a mostly deadly fight, Jiro and Rago are now fused, so he’s something of a trouble spot. That said, he’s pretty good in a fight, and has mononoke powers while still fighting for goodness and niceness, so he’s allowed to join the new team.

There are apparently two more team members we haven’t met, and as I indicated before, I think this feels more like “Part 1 of 2” than other Jump series of this sort. I like Ichika, despite her “I need to properly emphasize my rack for the readers” costume (which is even lampshaded). She seems to be the daughter of a ninja clan family who’s been dealing with “but you’re a girl” her entire life, and it’s made her a big angry and reluctant to accept help. Needless to say, the moment she mentions this, she’s put in a situation where she’s in dire straits and needs help. That said, she shows she’s a damn good fighter, and gets in the final blow, so I think it was pretty well handled. I suspect these two will be the lead “couple”, but I also expect any romance will be about 10th on the list of things this manga wants to do. It’s here to kick ass and take names, not flirt it up.

Add it all up and you have a decent first volume, and one I’d recommend to fans of things like Blue Exorcist. I look forward to the next volume, which should show what the series will actually be doing going forward.