Category Archives: reviews

Baccano!: 1933 The Slash -Cloudy to Rainy-

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

After a brief foray into the 21st century, Baccano! returns to its main plot, which takes place in the 1930s. Many of the main characters are featured in some way or another here, and in a way it feels like the author is writing enjoyable set pieces, as if he’s finally gotten a grip on writing everyone. Isaac and Miria are fun, loud, and seemingly completely random; Luck is seemingly cool but in reality rather frustrated with everything happening around him; Jacuzzi cries a lot but buckles down when he needs to, etc. That said, the book also features two minor characters from earlier books who get the spotlight here, and I suspect enjoyment of it depends on how much you enjoy those characters. It’s also, as you may have guessed by the title, the first of a two-parter, and unlike Grand Punk Railroad, this is definitely incomplete.

Tick Jefferson is in the top third of the cover art. We saw him before as the Gandor family’s torture expert, and he seemed like another of Narita’s ‘smiling insane guys’. Which he may be, to a lesser degree – he still really loves cutting people apart. But we get a bit of his family background, as well as a surprising amount of his philosophy, and see that when he’s not torturing people he’s surprisingly level-headed. His partner in the book (middle third of the cover) is Maria Barcelito, one of the assassins that we saw Claire completely destroy in the 4th novel, who joined the Gandors because she was so impressed by Keith stopping Claire. On the bright side, the Gandors gained a powerful assassins, probably their most powerful fighter. On the down side, Maria is annoying as hell, immature, can’t stop trying to cut anyone and anything with her swords, and is desperately in need of some humbling. Fortunately, she gets it in spades at the end of the book.

The bottom third of the cover art is Chane Laforet, the “girl in the black dress” from the Railroad books. The cliffhanger to those books had her being picked up by Jacuzzi’s gang, and she’s now living with them in Eve Genoard’s mansion in upper Manhattan (the explanation for why a gang is living in the Genoard mansion made me roll my eyes a bit, but I can see Eve just agreeing and then forgetting about it, especially given her obsession with finding Dallas). Chane doesn’t interact with Jacuzzi’s gang as much as I’d have liked, but she clearly values them highly as friends. She’s also clearly hooked up with Claire, something also implied at the end of the railroad arc, and I suspect Claire will have more to do in the next volume.

As for the villains, well, technically I suppose it’s Huey, though his daughter is unaware of what he’s doing. He has a group of people trying to offer Jacuzzi’s gang the power of immortality (please God no, I love the fact that Jacuzzi and Nice’s gang are just normal scrappy kids), though this goes south when their demo – Dallas Genoard, freshly retrieved from a sunken river and just as much of a giant dumbass – ends up getting too obnoxious and gets slashed. A lot. Immortality sounds great till you see that you can still feel horrible pain. We really only meet two of the villainous gang here. Tim is the leader and also shares a secret past with Tick Jefferson, and seems to be there to watch what was supposed to be a smooth situation spiral out of control. Adele is seemingly shy and meek… but in reality seems to really love fighting more than anyone. And we haven’t even met the mysterious Christopher yet…

This is a decent book, and I recommend it for those reading the series, obviously. That said, it really needs its second half, and feels slight as a result. It does have some rewards for the careful reader (watch Isaac and Miria’s reaction to the Genoard mansion), and Tick and Maria can be a lot of fun provided you don’t pay too much attention to how aggravating Maria is most of the time. You may want to wait till April and read this with its conclusion.

Umineko: When They Cry, Vol. 16

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Eita Mizuno. Released in Japan in three separate volumes as “Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Requiem of the Golden Witch” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Shonen Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Stephen Paul.

It’s been nearly a year since we last checked in on Rokkenjima. We have two arcs left, and they’re both packed to the gills – each is nine volumes total. And they’re sometimes big volumes. That means this first omnibus of three by Yen is 826 pages long, but fortunately it doesn’t feel like you’re reading a lot. By now we’re familiar with everyone in the story, and since Requiem is, for the most part, devoted to explaining the mysteries from the previous six arcs, everything glides along very smoothly. Well, we’re familiar with almost everyone in the story. This volume is noticeably short on Battler, who only shows up at the very start. Instead we get Willard D. Wright, who is to S. S. Van Dine what Dlanor is to Ronald Knox. Battler was a teenager who liked mysteries, Willard is an actual detective. And he’s here to get answers, along with his Watson, the heir to the Ushiromiya family, Lion.

That’s Lion on the front cover there, and you might be forgiven for a certain lack of recognition. And also wonder, as Will does, what Lion’s gender is. Ryukishi07 has deliberately hidden this from us, and explicitly told the manga artist (best known for Spiral: Bonds of Reasoning) to do the same, so I will try not to use gender pronouns. That said, if you understand Kinzo’s monstrous sexism from previous arcs, you can easily hazard a guess as to what gender his beloved grandchild and heir is. Lion is a lot of fun (and yes, the name completes the horrible Eva – Ange – Lion pun), pinching Will’s ass whenever he acts callous, which is a lot of the time. Will is retired, and doesn’t want to be here, but Bernkastel is basically forcing him to solve everything for her master. So we see him ask Rosa about what happened that day in 1967, talk to Jessica about her own experiences with being rude to Beatrice (or more accurately, Maria), and find out how Kinzo really got all that gold and who Beatrice was originally. (Admittedly, Kinzo’s story seems very romantic and idealized – you’re left wondering if that’s really all that happened.)

The ugliest part of this volume is, hands down, the section where everyone talks about the fact that Kinzo raped his own daughter, and all the servants basically say “well, yeah, that happened, but he really loved her mother, see?”. It’s infuriating, and at least Genji had the good sense to hide the next generation down until he was sure it wouldn’t happen AGAIN. Speaking of which, as rapidly becomes clear, Lion’s existence here ties into the 5th arc, where Natsuhi shoved the baby she’d been given by Kinzo to raise as her own off a cliff. Lion is what happens when she DOESN’T do that, something that Bern says is an incredibly rare thing. It’s to Lion’s credit that the first thing that comes to mind is defending Natsuhi, who really is a loving mother here. Honestly, Lion holds up pretty well with everything that’s going on, especially when we find out that in all the worlds where Natsuhi shoved the baby off the cliff, we get Beatrice, not Lion.

Towards the end of this omnibus, Will reveals the culprit to Lion and Bernkastel – but not to us, as we’re still supposed to make guesses. That said, many of the hints are laid out in front of us this volume as well. The fact that Shannon and Kanon are the only ones besides Will to not know who Lion is. The fact that when Will asks Shannon to go get Kanon so he can talk to them together, Shannon has possibly the scariest mental breakdown in the entire series. And the fact that when we get the “culprit” POV at the end, we see her, in 1976, working with a Shannon who looks exactly the same age as she does in 1986. Speaking of the word culprit, if you weren’t already horrified by the Evangelion pun, the fact that the nickname for the culprit is “Yasu” will surely have you rolling your eyes and grinding your teeth – that is, if you know Japanese mystery games.

This is, incest apologia aside, one of my favorite arcs, and the manga artist does a great job bringing it to life. Next time around we’ll get more flashbacks, as “Yasu” grows up, falls in love, and becomes a witch. If you’ve been reading Umineko all along, this is an essential volume.

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers, Vol. 3

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By Ishio Yamagata and Miyagi. Released in Japan by Shueisha. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Jennifer Ward.

I have to say that I was groaning when the beginning of this third volume dealt once again with “which one of us is the traitor”. Fortunately, like Book 2, the question quickly gets set aside as we deal with an ever-growing threat. We also deal with the return of Nashetania, who’s still trying to pursue her goal even if she has to kill a bunch of people. Her loopy amorality was a highlight of the first book, so I was looking forward to this. Sadly, we don’t get nearly as much Nashetania in the book as I’d like. Chamo is also sidelined, and Mora reduced to support. The first half mostly focuses on Adlet, Fremy and Rolonia getting into various fights and trying to figure out how to stop Nashetania – or at least find her. The other half of the book focuses on Goldof, as you might have guessed from the cover, and we get his backstory and see why he is so devoted to his princess.

The main problem with this is that Goldof is fairly stoic, with his quirk being a berserker rage and urge to destroy that only turns off around Nashetania. His past is tragic, but his churlish acceptance of it (and violence against women and children) make it harder to sympathize. Nashetania is the most interesting part of the flashback, and we also learn a bit about how she got to be the way she is (pretty much brainwashed since birth into being a cultist, which… well, fits her pretty well). In the present, Goldof’s narration shows him trying to figure out what the fiends are doing, who’s lying, and how he can be both a Brave and save Nashetania. I found it rather frustrating that Goldof kept thinking of himself as not as smart as Adlet, particularly as Adlet has never been all that smart in this series. He’s not all that smart here either, basically just running around till he arrives at the climax.

The best part of Rokka continues to be the mysteries of each book, which are pretty hard to figure out – the revelation about how one trick is done is sort of impressive and also rather disgusting. Even if the solutions aren’t as satisfying as the author thinks, it did keep me constantly trying to figure things out, the goal of any mystery. Sadly, the main issue with Rokka continues to be that I just don’t find the characters all that compelling. I enjoyed Mora when she was the focus in Book 2, but without her backstory she’s basically dull. Adlet is nowhere near as main character-ish as he should be, and as I said before, Goldof is supposed to be dumb muscle, but can come across easily as unlikable dumb muscle, especially when give the standard “save the world or save the woman you love” choice.

We’re now halfway through the series, and I’m not ready to give up on it just yet, but I really would like the real traitor to be found so that the book can move forward, and I’ll be honest: this series cries out for a manga spinoff that’s a high school AU. Mildly recommended, with reservations.