Karneval, Vol. 1

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By Touya Mikanagi. Released in Japan in two separate volumes by Ichijinsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Karneval is, I believe, one of those titles that is expected to coast by on style alone for the first few volumes, while it lovingly sets up its plot. And to be fair, it has quite a lot of style. There was never a point in reading this omnibus where I was bored and slipping ahead, though there were perhaps a few times when I desperately wanted an organizational chart or a “here’s how this world works”. But that’s not how immersion goes. In the meantime we have a pretty young boy and his grumpy yet also pretty friend/babysitter/audience identification character, running afoul of the bad guys and being rescued by a crack squad of eccentric superheroes who pose as a circus when they’re not causing major property damage or freaking people out.

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I believe that’s Nai on the cover there – I say “I believe” as he’s staring out at the reader confidently, something the Nai in the books would never do. I said Gareki was for the audience, and he’s desperately needed – in fact, I think he’s the main reason I enjoyed this title as much as I did. He stomps through the whole thing carrying Nai around as if he’s in a manga version of Midnight Run, and also manages to be the one member of the cast with no superpowers that we know of, though he gets by well enough with explosives. As for Nai, I actually thought the revelation about who he really is what the best part of the volume – it actually makes his moeblob tendencies make sense in context, even if it ends up giving us more questions than answers.

As for the rest of the cast, there are several men whose characterization seems to involve looking cool and making passes at each other, though I suspect the genuine BL content in this series will be zero. And they are pretty damn cool, if also ridiculous to a large degree – something I’ve come to expect from Zero-Sum titles. There are also a few women in the cast, who range from stoic to overly affectionate to full-on tsundere, but honestly none of them get as much attention as the guys this time around – hope that changes later on. Oh, and we also meet a set of twins and childhood friends who have “I am here to be tragic and motivate our hero” written all over them, which the cliffhanger seems to agree with me on.

There’s a healthy dose of humor here as well (the nurses’ reaction to their obnoxious doctor boss was probably my favorite), which also helps the medicine go down well. There’s nothing here that’s revolutionary or new, but for a manga that knows what its target audience wants, Karneval delivers quite nicely. Don’t try to think too hard about what’s going on, just sit back and enjoy the snarking, acting cool, and one-liners. Recommended for fans of Zero-Sum.

Soul Eater, Vol. 25

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By Atsushi Ohkubo. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine Shonen Gangan. Released in North America by Yen Press.

And so here we are at the end of another long-running shonen series. And it’s a good, solid ending, wrapping most plotlines up neatly, giving readers a big battle scene with lots of awesome moves and attacks, and resolving Crona as much as Crona was ever going to get resolved. The cover, as you can see, has Crona looming over our protagonists, and that seems appropriate, as in the end the fight is not so much to defeat Asura as it is to get a chance to try to talk Crona down one last time. And, of course, it would not be long-running shonen without the death of one of the main characters, which is done in such a way that even Excalibur is briefly not annoying. (It’s only briefly though.)

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It’s also interesting to see the attention paid to Soul and his growth. Soul’s struggles as a weapon have always been closely tied to Soul’s struggles as a musician, and he clearly has a life-or-death performance here. That fact that his music works most effectively when he accepts the madness that roils within himself, and the black blood within, is actually quite well done, even if it makes me wonder if Ohkubo was trying to say something about jazz artists and recreational drugs. But that’s probably just me. More to the point, he and Maka now trust each other completely, which after everything they’ve been through, is a relief. I liked his support when Maka is trying to convince Crona – he says “we believed in what Maka believed in”.

There’s a lot left open after this ending. Kid’s now the new Shinigami, and has already shown that his OCD is not going to magically go away anytime soon. Crona may be rescued someday, but today is not that day, and given all the crimes committed by Crona, it seems appropriate to end with moon sealage. (I have been endeavoring not to gender Crona through these reviews – unlike, say, Hange in Attack on Titan, where an author’s casual joking has spiraled completely out of control, I do believe Crona is quite deliberately not shown to be male or female, and that it works with their character.) As for romance, it was always on the back burner, and remains so – the only couples at the end are Kim and Ox, who get a dance, and Stein and Marie, who are creating new life. You could argue other things might happen in the future (I was rather startled by Maka’s response to Blair’s comment), but for now, things are up in the air.

This wasn’t a perfect ending – the boob jokes at the end fell totally flat with me, even if they do try to justify it in plot as Crona’s subconscious desires, and the “Noah-samas” were just as bad. But it made me happy overall. Eruka Frog was a character I always felt sorry for, so it was nice to see her pardoned and at peace. Rachel had been dropped from the manga the moment she was unpossessed, so it was fantastic to see her with her parents and showing she wasn’t completely broken by what happened to her. And it ends with a party, with everyone singing and dancing in the best One Piece tradition. Well, that and a shot of the city, with its bizarre sun and moon still hovering in the sky. Soul Eater’s world is still strange as hell, and it’s the world that is the main reason I recommend reading every volume of this series.

Sword Art Online: Progressive, Vol. 1

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By Reki Kawahara and abec. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On.

I’ve already discussed some of the ideas behind this concept in my review of the first manga, so I’ll try to skim over that and discuss what I enjoyed about SAO:P as a novel. Again, I don’t think it’s a sort of ‘reboot’ where you can read it in place of the original – I think knowing the characters already adds to the depth. But the main reason to read this is to see how Kawahara develops Aincrad, a world he introduced and essentially abandoned in the first book, sequels and side stories aside. And we also get the addition of Asuna’s POV narration, though sadly only for part of the first arc, after which it’s back to all Kirito all the time.

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Despite this, Asuna benefits enormously from the added face time. We see her at the start, having essentially decided that she wants to attempt to die with dignity, or at least on her own terms, something that Kirito is able to talk her out of. As the book goes on (and it is a BIG book – at 360 pages, almost as big as Fairy Dance put together) and Asuna starts to actually pay attention to the rules of the game and how to succeed, she becomes just as good if not better than Kirito – the skills she’s used her entire life as a girl who has to be in the top of the class for everything now benefit her in the RPG environment, and she also has more socialization than Kirito, meaning she can see people in a way that he’s unable to – this really becomes apparent in the second half of the book, where Kirito has pegged himself as an evil person, and Asuna has to side-eye him several times and go “really?”. Kirito, meanwhile sees potential in Asuna, and wants her to be the role model for the game world that he feels unworthy of being himself. They’re not a couple here, but you definitely see why they’re perfect for each other – they’re both quite similar, and their differences complement each other.

There’s no Klein, Lisbeth or Silica here, and Agil is mostly just support. The new addition is Argo, though she’ll be familiar to fans of the anime. She doesn’t vanish after the first few pages, however, and actually gets to show off some character depth and an awesome ‘to the rescue’ bit. In addition, the “Interlude” focusing on her and Kirito is hilarious, the second funniest part of the book. (The funniest part of the book involves Asuna’s inventory and Kirito’s complete ignorance of a maiden’s true heart, as well as measuring rage in gravitational units – I’ll leave it at that.)

The most interesting part of the book takes place right at the end, where a scheme is uncovered that led indirectly to the death of a player (or so they hear), and the concept of PKing comes up for the first time, this time as capital punishment. When does justice become vigilante justice? Kirito has definite views on the subject, but he’s already burned so many bridges (or at least he thinks he has) that he doesn’t want to make any rallying speeches. Luckily, things defuse before we can go there, but everyone is now thinking about it. We’re not at Laughing Coffin just yet, but the seed has been planted.

This book covers the first two floors of Aincrad, and the afterword says there should be 2 floors per novel, so things will likely continue to move quite slowly. This is the main goal of this series, of course, and I’m greatly enjoying what it’s trying to do. And of course there’s also an additional bonus – this is 8 years after the author first wrote SAO, and his prose has improved a great deal. Sword Art Online fans will love this. (Also, I appreciate that ‘Kuroko’ was likely impossible to translate without a footnote, but ‘Blackie’? Geh.)