Dorohedoro, Vol. 19

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By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hibana. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by AltJapan Co., Ltd. (Hiroko Yoda + Matt Alt).

I’ve missed Caiman. Yes, there’s a question as to who the real Caiman actually is, but I don’t care, I’ve missed THIS Caiman, the big goofy guy with the lizard head. Nikaido clearly has as well, even though she’s a lot more wary about his appearance than I am, even losing her perpetual happy face for a bit as she tries to work out what happened. Admittedly, what happened it not exactly clear to the reader either: it’s very fitting that when she explains to Caiman everything that’s happened to him for the past year, and asks if he understood, his response is an immediate “No”. I feel you, Caiman. We’ve all been there.

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After the last volume, I was hoping for a bit less blood and guts, and to a certain extent that’s true, as we exchange it for a lot of scenes of people walking around trying to figure things out or avoid figuring other things out. In addition to Nikaido and Caiman, we have Dr. Kasukabe and Haru, who are trying to outthink our main devil leader and failing rather badly; the decapitated remains of En’s gang, who are having trouble doing much of anything at all, though ironically they may achieve more than the rest of the cast here; and Ebisu and her amnesiac slave, who are just trying to get En’s body back to the rest but are unfortunate enough to be the latest ones to run into Zombie Shin. Hope that goes better for them than it did the last group.

The big fight here is between Haru and Nikaido/Caiman, and it goes very badly very fast. So badly that Dr. Kasukabe is actually killed, and when I saw that I knew what was coming next. Sure enough, after Haru went berserk and annihilated Caiman (who must be getting tired of having his head killed in so many ways… melted this time), Nikaido breaks out her sorcerer’s magic and reverses time so she can stop the fight. This is always a dangerous narrative thing to do. Fans seem to have no issues with resurrecting people from a head in a jar, or a literal hell with devils, or all sorts of other kinds of magic, but time travel to rewrite the past still seems somewhat taboo. Still, we’ve seen Nikaido use it before, and I’m sure we will again, as she has two chances let.

This definitely now has the feel of a storyline that’s building to an ending, though it’s not quite over yet in Japan. I am hoping that the En half of Dorohedoro’s cast herd stops being a pile of body parts and gets to do something soon, and it would be nice to see Shin snap out of whatever zombie funk he’s in. And I’m not sure I want Nikaido being a devil either. With most stories you yearn for the characters to grow and change as the story comes to an end, but I have to admit, I just want my goofy gyoza lovers and violence-happy sorcerers back, please.

By the way, best joke of the volume has to be Caiman getting disgusted by a severed hand on the Store Knife, not realizing that it’s his OWN hand from the aborted future. A joke you can only pull off with Nikaido around.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency, Vol. 4

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By Hirohiko Araki. Released in Japan as “Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Evan Galloway.

By now I think the seasoned JoJo reader is used to the ‘Bizarre’ part of the title, to the point that when the vampire horses show up early in this volume it merely earns a slight shrug, as if to say “of course there would be vampire horses, this is JoJo’. And I feel much the same way. That said, the vampire squirrel growing from the villain’s severed hand took even me by surprise, and reminded us of why this title was so successful – it really does not know when to quit. Be it amazingly graphic violence (for a Jump title), badass boasting, cool posing, or even coming back from near death almost a dozen times over the course of the book, Battle Tendency can be exhausting.

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We’re down to only two villains, each based off of a classic 1980s music reference, and the book is almost entirely devoted to JoJo taking out the two one by one. (What, you thought they would double team him? Get real. This is an HONORABLE fight between MEN!) First we have Wham… pardon me, Wamuu (is anyone else here reminded of the old Bastard!! translations?), who goes all Ben-Hur on JoJo with a chariot race to the death. This gives us a chance to see JoJo’s strength and weaknesses, because trust me, he’s filled with weaknesses. Sometimes you want to strangle the kid for how impulsive he is. It’s also a good way to see how he thinks, though, and to show us that much of his fabled “I’m going to predict what you say/do next” is just bluffing. Then we’re supposed to see his mentor (and, as it turns out, something more) Lisa Lisa fight Cars… sorry, Kars. But alas, this is JoJo’s title, and so she’s reduced to hostage bait. Sigh.

And so we come to the end of another arc. The villain has been destroyed after multiple attempts, but just as in the first series, the hero dies. Or so one might think. As I said in my last review, Caesar’s death allows JoJo to live on, in a parallel of Speedwagon and Erina living on after Jonathan’s death. It also gives us a hilariously silly graveside scene where JoJo shows up with Suzi Q in tow, wondering why everyone is at his grave and surprised to see him. (It also reads as very rushed – I suspect Araki ran out of time, or maybe just didn’t care enough. More Suzi Q, please!) And we see an older, grumpier, and apparently Japanese-hating Joseph at the very end, showing that amazingly, a Joestar *can* live to a ripe old age. This dovetails nicely with the start of the third arc, which takes place in Japan.

I enjoyed Battle Tendency a lot, more, I think, than the first part. It lacks a truly memorable villain like Dio, but Joseph is a lot more charismatic and likeable than Jonathan was. I look forward to seeing how Jotaro is different from both of them. I also look forward to less good-hearted Nazis in the next series. But above all, I hope we can top the vampire squirrels for hands thing, because that’s what JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, in the end, is all about.

Attack on Titan, Vol. 19

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By Hajime Isayama. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Ko Ransom.

It feels like it’s been forever since we’ve seen a volume of Attack on Titan that is almost entirely devoted to fighting titans. The stakes are higher this time, though, as we know these titans. Most of the volume is devoted to dealing with Reiner and Bertholt, led by the Beast Titan, doing their best to wipe out the Survey Corps, followed by humanity. Our heroes, of course, are trying their best to stop them, and not only have Armin’s tactics but Erwin’s planning and Hange’s scientific genius. Attack on Titan has done ambiguity well in several past volumes, but there’s little of that here – though they try to portray themselves in a sympathetic way, there’s no doubting Reiner and Bertholt are the bad guys, and both seem to have accepted that, though we still don’t know the big ‘reason’ everyone has to die.

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The most interesting thing here plotwise is the extended flashback we get to Marco, and how he died. Marco was killed off at the very beginning of the manga, but his picture appears in the cast list every time regardless, with a big X through it. This is for a reason – his death was very much a turning point. Now we find out it wasn’t just a turning point for the main cast, but for the secret Titan infiltrators as well. I still have trouble seeing the normally stoic Annie as emotional and panicky as she gets here, but Reiner is handled perfectly. We’ve seen before how he sometimes disassociates himself from the actions he has to take as a traitor, and that certainly comes through here. There’s also an astonishing contempt for Bertholt throughout the book – he’s always been a meek follower, but this just underlines that, with Reiner saying “I’ve never considered you reliable.”

It’s telling therefore that Bertholt’s big screaming confrontation is with Armin, who I think has also felt a bit weak at times, though unlike Bertholt he has the strength of his convictions. Bertholt’s ridiculous demands – give us Eren, and kill all of humanity – cause everyone to just stop and stare, and rightly so. Of course, humanity is not giving in so easily. Hange’s “thunder spears” are quite clever, even if they can also be extremely dangerous, and they may have actually dealt serious damage to Reiner. That said, he is a named character, and for all of Attack on Titan’s reputation as a dark and brutal series, named characters have done pretty well for themselves – Word of God said Sasha was supposed to die in the ninth volume but the editors asked for her to be spared.

That may change soon, though. Did we really see Hange killed off in the last page? Probably not, not in an offscreen manner like that. What about Reiner or Bertholt? And have we totally forgotten about the Beast Titan – what are his plans aside from letting those two try to destroy everything? This volume had a lot of noble fighting and impassioned screaming. I suspect next time may bring us a bit more tragedy.