Of the Red, the Light, and the Ayakashi, Vol. 1

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By nanao and HaccaWorks*. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Gene. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I’ve spoken before about how it can sometimes be difficult to review a new volume of a shoujo romance whose basic premise is ‘girl in high school likes guy, feelings ensue’, as there’s just so many of those out in North America. I am very happy to say that I’m starting to feel that way about the influx of yokai manga over here as well. We have all different types of yokai titles over here, including those for kids, for young adults, for men, for women. After a year that saw the loss of Shigeru Mizuki, it’s heartwarming to see his legacy, and that of Japan’s folklore, carry on. And so we have this new series, which is actually based off of a visual novel, and brings together the yokai genre with mystery, horror, and a bit of not-quite-BL – exactly what a shoujo reader would enjoy.

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Our hero is Yue, a name that longtime readers of manga will know always seems to be connected to the supernatural in some way. (I believe in Chinese it means moon.) He’s a yokai, and seems to be very important, but is unfamiliar with much of the world beyond the temple area in which he lives. So he and his friend/familiar descend the mountain to attend a festival, and run into two contrasting humans, one quiet and serious, the other angry and a bit over the top. As the series goes on, and he gets permission to visit his new wannabe friends, though, we discover the village where this is taking place is slightly off to begin with, and that there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

This series is an excellent example of what you want in a first volume. It gives you enough backstory and characterization to satisfy while making you want to read more to see what happens. Yue is sweet and naive without seeming foolish, and Tsubaki is reserved but shows a genuine love of family. As for Akiyoshi, he provides some of the series’ few laughs with his stalker-ish ways, but also gets to carry the bulk of the exposition, as he knows about the yokai without being part of them. Honestly, the three leads make a good team.

As for the horror and mystery, well, it would appear the danger is not just of having your life taken, as if a typical vampire manga, but having your very existence removed from the world. An old kindly elementary school principal vanishes one day, and those connected to the school deny he was ever there – or that they even had a principal. It gives an extra frisson of creepy to the whole deal. For more old-fashioned horror, there’s also the standard scary black ghosts that try to eat you, which also pop up a lot in these sorts of manga. Basically, AkaAka (its fan nickname) may not tread all that much original ground, but it hits all the right notes and really makes you want to read on. A definite good read, despite a double bad sign of both a name all in lowercase *and* a name with a special character in the authors.

Emma, Vol. 3

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By Kaoru Mori. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Enterbrain, serialized in the magazine Comic Beam. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The entire first half of this omnibus gives the reader the opportunity to watch a giant other shoe dropping, and the back half then shows the shoe’s impact, with horrible consequences for many people, but mostly for Emma. Last time I talked about how well the repressed yet burgeoning love between William and Emma is, and it flowers here, with Emma visibly getting happier and less repressed. William too is different now that he accepts his feelings and is determined to do something about them. Sadly, that determination runs up against absolutely everyone – his own family, who are determined that he not make the same mistakes they made, and more importantly his fiancee’s family, who may cross over the line into actually being evil, or at least willing to commit slow murder.

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The author is very fond of big, dramatic moments – you see it in her Bride’s Story series as well – and you can see why, as she’s fantastic at handling them. The arrival of William at the Molders estate, and Emma running out to embrace him (the the surprise and amusement of the ENTIRE household) is fantastic, and reminds you again that it’s nicely coincidental that Emma ended up in the one household in Britain that wouldn’t be appalled at this. That said, that’s why William came up to meet her – the rest of society is not going to be quite as forgiving. The volume starts off with a flashback showing us how William’s parents, Richard and Aurelia, met and married. Aurelia is not of a lower class like Emma is, but she’s still “eccentric”, and that’s deadly for the time. More to the point, she’s introverted, and the pressures of society exhaust her to a damaging degree. Which is why they now live apart. It’s very bittersweet.

As for Eleanor’s father, wooooow. It’s rare we meet someone in a manga like this who gets to be pure evil. He’s really well handled, too, being extremely polite to William’s father, then throwing away his gloves in disgust afterwards, as he had touched someone of a merchant class – horrors! When William breaks off his impetuous and foolish engagement to Eleanor, to her horror, the Viscount calmly sees what needs to be done – Emma needs to disappear. Luckily, he knows some thugs who can fairly easily trick and abduct her (though the cliffhanger seems to hint she may be rescued soon). This sequence may be the weakest in the book – it’s a bit overmelodramatic, to be honest – but it’s earned, at least, and the true high point of the last half of the book is Williams’ screaming match with his father in any case.

I expect things to be resolved soon, even though we have two full omnibuses to go – the last three volumes of Emma were side stories and sequels, so these two wacky kids should get their happy ending soon. Which is good, as this volume could get pretty depressing at times – as Mori herself notes in the afterword. No worries, the journey is still very much worth the effort.

Saki, Vol. 1

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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.

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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.