Saki, Vol. 1

Leave a reply

By Ritz Kobayashi. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Gangan. Released in North America digitally by Yen Press.

Variations on a theme is one of the cornerstones of writing, and it’s just as true for manga. While it’s always nice to see something that no one’s ever done before, the true prizes for publishers are the series that are what’s been done before countless times, but with a variation or twist that makes it different enough so that people won’t get bored. This is especially true of sports manga, which tend to hit the same plot beats. There’s a ragtag bunch of misfits, an eccentric team leader, fighting to get to the national tournament… we’ve seen this before in soccer, baseball, and football manga here in North America. And now, with Saki, we get to see it happen with mahjong. Because trust me, mahjong is serious business in Japan, definitely worthy of a cute seinen sports series.

sakivol1

Saki is our reluctant heroine, a girl who’s not a fan of mahjong because she always played it with her family, and lost her allowance when she did badly. As a result, when she plays now she’s learned to end up not winning or losing, but getting precisely zero points, thus taking the heat off. Of course, this is much harder than it sounds, and the club quickly realizes they have a second prodigy on their hands. Second because they already have Nodoka, a mahjong prodigy whose skill is almost unparalleled… until she meets Saki, who has intuition in-game that’s almost supernatural. Can the two of them learn from each other’s weak points and become even better? And is Saki’s family really just a cutthroat family that happens to like mahjong?

As I said, this is a sports manga with mahjong, and family angst is part of that. You may also remember similar issues in Girls Und panzer, which was a spots manga with tanks, and shares quite a few qualities with Saki. This series is also not afraid to be ridiculous – Kobayashi knows from prior mahjong series that dramatic flourishes and poses are what make the genre, and so tiled will be flipped earnestly and with pure hearts. There is a lot of discussion of how mahjong works, but if you don’t know it doesn’t really detract from the story, any more than not knowing how football worked detracted from Eyeshield 21.

The main reason to read this is the characters. Saki clearly has issues, and is also somewhat introverted. Nodoka has different issues, but a similar personality, and finds Saki’s ambivalence towards the game intensely frustrating. And even when Saki decides to join the club, there’s no guarantees – the first thing that the president does is have the two of them get crushed by a professional mahjong player, so that they know how far they both have to go. Oh yes, and there’s plenty of eccentricity here as well, mostly from Yuuki, a young girl who enjoys starting off with huge wins (which she can’t hold), tacos, and teasing the supposed male lead, though more accurately he’s the male extra.

Saki can get a bit dry in its mahjong chat, and the fanservice reminds you this runs in a seinen magazine, but it’s a lot of fun, with two likeable heroines. I will definitely be getting more of it.

The Devil Is A Part-Timer!, Vol. 3

Leave a reply

By Satoshi Wagahara and 029. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen Press.

After Sariel proved to be a rather creepy and awful villain in Book 2, I was not going to be surprised if another archangel showed up to make trouble for Maou and company, and sure enough, Gabriel pops up halfway through the book to alternately threaten and be amusing. As with Emeralda, he seems to have some sort of regional accent in the original, which is conveyed by giving him a sort of ‘valley girl’ style voice – if you imagine Poland from the Hetalia books, you’re on the right track. In any case, as a villain he’s merely OK, mostly as we’re used to these guys being taken out fairly easily by now. As a comic character he’s funnier, being a whining slacker who seems to simply be very bad at his job, and he naturally ends up staying in Japan once the book ends.

devil3

That said, clearly the more important new character here is Alas Ramus, the magical child who appears from inside an apple (Ringotaro?) and immediately declares that Maou and Emi are her mother and father. She’s cute and clingy, as you’d expect from a girl who acts one year old most of the time, but she’s also a magical macguffin, so is allowed to do things like explain the plot in baby talk. Somewhat less successful is her resolution of the battle with Gabriel, mostly as the author wants to pretend briefly that Alas Ramus is returning to the fantasy world, so we get a brief “oh no, she sacrificed herself” beat. The trouble is that, as I indicated earlier, this isn’t the sort of series that would seriously do that, so of course it turns out she actually merged with Emi’s Holy Sword, which is now even more holy.

The bigger impact that Alas Ramus has is on the pseudo-harem that the books continue to tease. Chiho has a brief crisis of conscience when she realizes that, even after Maou says he depends on her, she still can’t help getting jealous about Maou and Emi raising a child together. (It’s almost as if she’s a teenager or something…) And Emi is again starting to realize that perhaps Maou is not quite the Fantasy Hitler that she wants to imagine him as, and continues to have more of the worldview that she keeps intact in order not to have a complete nervous breakdown kicked out from under her. (The cliffhanger implies the breakdown will not be long in coming.) And Maou gives us some backstory that suggests that most of the atrocities that happened while he ruled Ente Isla were less “I am evil” and more “I wasn’t really paying attention to my underlings”. And, more importantly, that he bitterly regrets that was the case. This is the best part of the book.

So while I don’t think this was quite as good as the first two books, it’s still very entertaining, and also continues the story past the anime, for those who hate to read already adapted novels. And the prose style, particularly the snarky narration, is excellent – as I’ve said before, this is one of Yen On’s smoothest translations. Definitely a fun read.

Dorohedoro, Vol. 17

Leave a reply

By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hibana. Released in North America by Viz.

Despite all its violence and loving depictions of chopped-up corpses, Dorohedoro has always had a loose relationship with actually killing characters off, given that there are several deus ex machinas in this universe able to resurrect someone from the dead given enough time and materials. No one really doubts En is eventually going to be back, for example, and even though Fujita lay at death’s door and lost an arm in the last volume, he’s fully healed early on here. This is why when we do see genuine death it has an impact, even if there’s something in the back of our heads saying “are they reeeeeaaallly dead?”.

doro17

Natsuki’s death in Vol. 13 was such a death, and it gets confirmed here in the worst way, as Ton, the one most dedicated to finding her true fate, ends up sharing it. This is actually sort of sweet and touching in a horrible way, as Ton comes across her body, now strangely mute, but can’t escape where he thinks they are. There’s even a ‘going into the light’ cliche to show off that yes, they are indeed dead. The same can’t be said for the rest of the cross-eyes, though, as even though the majority of them are horrible butchered by their boss, who they’ve finally decided is not worthy of following, we could still see them come back, as we were able to save the corpses’ heads. It’s that kind of series.

Meanwhile, En’s party is also discussing death. Sure, they have Noi, and Judas’ Ear, but there’s still some kinds of lethal blows that you just can’t fix. Luckily, there’s an operation that makes a person virtually unkillable, even if they get their brains blown out. Admittedly, the operation is almost always lethal, but that’s why you do it on someone like Noi, who already has amazing resurrection powers. I love that Noi hates this, and regards it as a safety measure because she’s too weak – something Ebisu is quick to point out is basically correct. When you have the ability to heal anyone from certain death, you get coddled a bit, whereas Noi just wants to keep punching people till their bodies are piles of goo.

And then there’s Nikaido, whose motives are becoming more and more questionable as she gains more and more of her devil powers – her usually expressive eyes get narrowed to pinpricks, and the gyoza she made in a devil-induced flurry last time seem to be dangerously addictive. It’s a bit difficult to talk about morality in a series like Dorohedoro, where even the nice and sweet people happily go around butchering passersby. But you get the sense that something here is off, that Nikaido is heading down a dangerous road. This is not helped by the absence of Caiman – Risu just does not have the same ability to restrain her weirder impulses. In the meantime, we’ve now gathered the entire cast at the department store setting, and Fujita has managed to find En’s tumor, so I suspect the next volume may contain even more gore than this one, if that is strictly possible. Assuming you can get past the gore, highly recommended as always.