Category Archives: reviews

Toppu GP, Vol. 1

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By Kosuke Fujishima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

It is somewhat mindboggling that we did not arrive at this point a good 35 years ago. No one has put more effort into writing motorbikes into series that did not necessarily need a lot of motorbike attention as Kosuke Fujishima has. You’re Under Arrest was a buddy cop manga, but right from the start it was clear that both girls were about driving fast, and making their cars and bikes as fast as possible. Oh My Goddess! had goddesses, demons, heaven, hell, and so many motocross races it wasn’t even funny, to the point where entire volumes barely focused on anything but racing. Even minor series such as Paradise Residence or EX-Driver have found a way to show off bikes and souped-up engines. Yet somehow, Fujishima has never written a pure, modern-day racing manga until now. Can we blame Initial D?

For the most part, it’s been worth the wait. You can argue all you want that Fujishima sometimes skimps on characterization, but there’s no doubt the man knows how to write a race. The racing here is sort of like the dancing in Welcome to the Ballroom – exciting, understandable, fast, and it makes you want to find out more about it yourself. The hero, as you might guess from the title, is Toppu, a young kid who was just interested in building Gundam models and not much else. But he has two big things going for him to get him into the world of Grand Prix racing: a) an ability to analyze how to best race by merely watching others, and b) a massive crush on the girl next door, Myne, who’s a very talented GP rider and is convinced that Toppu could be even better. And, after finally getting on a bike to try it, he discovers a love of racing himself.

As you might guess from Toppu’s grumpy mug on the cover of this volume, he’s not exactly filled with the joy of everyday living. Myne makes up for that, being such a force of pure cuteness and verve that I had to check to make sure this wasn’t being written by Mitsuru Adachi. (Actually, like Adachi, I wonder if Myne might end up being a posthumous character as this goes on – Toppu’s “I hope you’re watching this” to the skies in the starting flashforward is ambiguous – but I suspect Fujishima is not the sort to kill off his cast quite like that.) She gets some development as well – when two brothers bend the rules in their favor to try to topple Toppu (say that three times fast), she goes after them in the next race out of pure vengeance – which she realizes, thankfully, pulling back and reminding herself of the joy of racing.

And really, that’s why you want to read this, more than the plot or characters. It is a giant love letter to motorbikes, their care and maintenance, and the way that they move around a track. I’m not sure when the next volume will be out – we’re already caught up with Japan – but I can’t wait for more.

The Asterisk War: The Phoenix War Dance

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By Yuu Miyazaki and okiura. Released in Japan by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Melissa Tanaka.

The Asterisk War, quality of writing or no, has a tendency to be overly cliched. Sometimes, in fact, it’s so cliched it actually throws me off my game and surprises me. We’re introduced to a pair of sisters here, who end up fighting Ayato and Julis towards the end of the book. Given that we first meet the older sister literally chained up in a subbasement, I expected her to be the barely controllable psycho one gets chained up in subbasements. As it turns out, she loves to fight, but is far nicer than it would seem (though she was right to ditch the weapon trying to overpower her mind). As for the younger sister, I naturally expected her to show that the sweet girl act was a facade, and that she was really the evil one and the brains of the outfit. Hope. She’s just as sweet as she seems, and is there to cook and be rescued. You can second guess yourself on how cliched this book can be.

This is not to say I did not enjoy the book – I did. It’s as deep as a puddle, but that’s not what I’m looking for. Actually, the one time I think that the book really succeeded in creeping me out was when Claudia (who gets the cover art this time) explains the price she pays for the ability to use her weapons, and what it does to almost everyone who isn’t her. One wonders just how much of the flirty yet manipulative student council president is an act – though probably not much, I’ve already learned my lesson on second guessing myself. As for the rest of the harem, Julis is tsundere, though as always it’s a mild case; Saya is cool and seemingly stoic, and Kirin is shy, and they all still like Ayato a lot. I suspect we can also add Priscilla by the end of this book. Ayato is, of course, completely unnoticing, not getting at all why the girls want him to rub their head.

As you may have gathered, we’ve entered the tournament arc part of the story, and it appears it’s going to last more than one book. This allows us to see Ayato and Julis curbstomp a few opponents into the ground, as we know that they’re going to make it close to the finals as, well, they’re the heroes. In fact, given Julis’ wish, I suspect they pretty much have to win. Not so for Saya and Kirin, and I was pleased to see that they also live to fight another novel. Of the new characters, easily the most memorable – even more than the sisters who are the focus of the book – are the two AI robots, who seem deliberately written to be cartoon cliches. In fact, their interaction reminded me a lot of The Poet and Sickle from the later Baccano books, though thankfully Ardy does not speak nearly as floridly as the Poet. They to pummel their way through the contest, and I suspect we’ll get a confrontation between them and our heroes soon.

To sum up, this book is much like the last two books – hilariously unoriginal and yet fun to read in spite of that. It’s the perfect book to take on a vacation – just be aware the books are short, you’ll likely need to take something else as well.

Ghost Diary, Vol. 1

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By Seiju Natsumegu. Released in Japan as “Kaidan Nikki” by ASCII Media Works, serialized in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Krista Shipley, Adapted by Shannon Fay.

For a while now, there has been a war going on in manga, though some may not have noticed it. Here at Manga Bookshelf, though, we pride ourselves on observational skills, and have watched the fallout with much interest. I am referring, of course, to the battle between manga being licensed about yokai and manga being licensed about monster girls. Both seemingly involving the same thing, but in reality these are very different beasts. Monster Girl series, with one or two exceptions, show us various types of creatures living alongside humans in society, while yokai series tend to involve humans investigating said creatures as dangerous and mysterious phenomena. Ghost Diary ran in Dengeki Daioh, so honestly I was expecting the former, but make no mistake about it, this is a relatively serious work, and its dark turns surprised me.

The plot involves a group of high-school occultists who go around searching for mysterious things. That said, most of the club are there to fill out the cast, and the real stars are Kyouichi, a teen exorcists who is haunted by a tragic past, and Mayumi, the standard cardboard cutout tsundere who likes him. Kyouichi’s older sister disappeared after a battle with a yokai that was coming after Kyouichi himself, and he’s vowed to find her. Luckily, he has help. Unluckily, it’s the worst kind of help. Chloe is a grim reaper who seemingly wants to find Kyouichi’s sister as well so she can get her memories back, and offers to help him out when he needs it, to the point of moving into his house. Unfortunately for Kyouichi, Chloe is not going to be one of those quirky mentors you see so often in these sorts of series.

As you may have guessed by my brief snarkiness in the prior paragraph, I wasn’t all that impressed with the love interest in this series, and the rest of the club is also a bit underwhelming (even the shy girl who speaks through her doll has been done better elsewhere, though I admit the overweight yakuza is new). But make no mistake about it, you want to read this manga for the relationship between Kyouichi and Chloe, as she kills his friends (then resurrects them, to be fair), destroys what might otherwise have been a heartwarming chapter about a dead baker who was moved by Kyouichi’s sister, and otherwise behaves like she may be the villain of the series. But she may not be – certainly at times she does behave very much like the mentor she wants to be, and it’s unclear if she’s the antagonist of the whole series or just a horrible creature. I want to see more of her.

This series is not for everyone – the last chapter has some disturbing rape threats from a man trapped in the body of a prepubescent boy – but overall I was pleasantly surprised. This is a dark take on a genre that already gets pretty dark. And it’s only three volumes, so I’m definitely interested in finishing it. Let’s hope that Kyouichi can survive it.