D-Frag!, Vol. 1

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By Tomoya Haruno. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Alive. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

An action manga can get away with a chapter or two with no fighting. A romance manga relies on there being little to no resolution for volumes at a time. But a gag manga has to have gags, or else it runs the risk of failure even after only a chapter. Being funny, on a long-term basis, can be quite difficult. Most writers therefore try to balance out their humorous manga with other elements, such as the aforementioned fighting or romance. When you do see an author that tries to pull off straight-up gag manga, then, it’s an impressive thing. Particularly if it’s been licensed in North America, whose gag manga litter the shores of the river Styx. D-Frag! is not quite PURE gag manga, such as Bobobo-bo Bo-Bobo or Cromartie High School, but it comes pretty damn close.

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I’m not exactly sure what the title is supposed to signify, as the manga has nothing to do with defragmenting your hard drive. Instead it’s a variation on ‘straight man guy joins a really weird club’, only without the strong personality of a Haruhi or Kyon. Kazama wants to be a delinquent, but is honestly too nice and well-meaning. He’s tricked into joining the “Game Development Club”, whose members include a thug (who’s also student council president), a jock, a space cadet, and the teaching advisor, who is usually mistaken for one of the students. The plot, such as it is, starts when he finds out there’s already a Game Development Club – the ‘real” one, so to speak – and that the club he’s now joined is a fake offshoot.

If this doesn’t sound like much to hang a plot on, well, you’re right there. The only member of the real club who matters is Takao, who fell out with one of the fake club members and is trying to make up with her by being stubborn and screaming a lot, in the traditional manga way. She also has a large chest which is frequently commented on, lest you worry that Comic Alive had suddenly turned into some other magazine. Seeing her interaction with Roku is nevertheless a highlight of the volume, and leads to the only (very brief) serious moments. Much of the rest of it is the eccentric personalities of everyone involved, and Kazama’s tsukkomi reaction to their antics.

Another impressive aspect of this first volume: there’s little to no romance suggested. Now, this may change, but I greatly enjoyed that this manga is not a harem manga with gag elements, but devoted entirely to being weird and silly. Kazama is far too busy trying to figure out how to deal with anyone to find them attractive (his preferences are apparently towards big breasts, but even this is used as gag fodder), and girls such as Roku seem more content to simply have him around then have an unrequited crush.

This sort of series is dangerous to read, because if it loses its humor and pacing, it could crash very fast. But Vol. 1 is a solid start, and I laughed out loud several times. I’m interested in seeing where it goes.

Blood Lad, Vol. 5

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By Yuuki Kodama. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I said last time that it was the small character moments that were the best in Blood Lad, and that’s still true. But it can’t be denied, the main plot has become increasingly more readable even as it becomes more deadly. There’s an awful lot going on here, and if it seems to be the sort of thing that you always see happen in manga series like this one, well, there’s a reason for that. Blood Lad not only breaks the fourth wall, but sits around it and examines why it’s a wall at all, with the help of all the lampshades it’s hanging to shed light on the subject. (This tortured metaphor is brought to you by the letter R.)

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At the end of the last volume, we saw the culmination of all of Braz’ clever schemes and manipulations, as he manages to resurrect his dead father to regain the kingdom. Naturally, everything goes completely per-shaped not twenty minutes in, because Braz is not the star of this manga, and therefore the world does not run according to his rules. This is brought home to him over and over again by Staz, who is the star, and discusses the virtues of things like just attacking without thinking in order to save everyone. Blood Lad may run in a seinen magazine, but at heart it’s all shonen.

This leads to the big event of the second half; having been forced to retreat from the big villain, Staz has a clever plan: read his vast collection of manga to find a way to defeat Akim. It’s the sort of twist that makes you groan, even in a manga this meta. But then Staz starts to explain his reasoning for this. Due to the way reincarnation works between the human and magic world, he thinks that manga published in the modern day might be subconscious memories of what actually occurred years ago in the demon world, involving powers and objects now lost. Therefore, it is vitally important to read that 86-volume series.

Actually, my favorite manga-related joke in this volume is everyone getting so worked up over shoujo love comedy Marmalade Boy… sorry, Lemonade Boy. (The covers look identical, so this is just “wait, I don’t write for Shueisha” at work here.) It could be argued that the romance is the weakest part of Blood Lad, mostly as Fuyumi still tends to be a bit of a drip. We’re helped here by focusing on Bell, who’s got it bad for Staz but suffers from the inability to express herself and a colossal case of poor timing, plus (as the reader knows) the fact that Staz loves Fuyumi but isn’t quite aware of it yet. There’s plenty of comedic moments, but her feelings aren’t belittled at all, which I appreciated.

We do still get the small character moments in this book – Liz’s reaction to Braz’s fate, and the followup to it, is wonderful – but there’s no denying that things are getting darker and more deadly. It looks like we’re headed for a major battle in the next volume, which is a shame as it will be a while – Vol. 11 came out in Japan this May, meaning we don’t even have enough for half a release yet. In the meantime, though, we have this volume. There are probably better manga series out there, but there are few series as compulsively readable as Blood Lad.

Inu x Boku SS, Vol. 4

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By Cocoa Fujiwara. Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the magazine Gangan Joker. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This is one of those volumes where I recommend that if you enjoy the series and haven’t read it, you avoid reading my review so that you aren’t totally spoiled. Just an FYI. In fact, let’s put an image here to block it off.

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Admittedly, much like Higurashi, I suspect that the spoiler of “everyone dies” is something that most fans of the series knew before they picked this up. There is an anime, and it’s the type of series that appeals more to hardcore fans than casual ones, I think. This is not to say this isn’t a good volume – it is pretty good, and I think has done a nice job of telegraphing things. But we now know that this was meant to be a prologue to the main story, which presumably takes place in the future when everyone is reincarnated again. And as such, I think the odd pacing of the first few volumes make sense – the author wanted to have enough volumes so that this had an emotional impact, but didn’t really have enough for everyone to do so stretched a lot out.

It’s not helped that I feel the cast is a bit too big for a series that depends so much on emotional two-hander relationships. Sure, we get lots of time devoted to our leads, but I still can never quite remember the names when they’re all said in a group, particularly as they’re all fancy 4-5 syllable rich and hard to remember names. And we get more people introduced here, as we see the old woman who seems to be in charge of the yokai group, her young assistant, and the evil kid who seems to be behind the attacks that kill everyone off.

This leads to the other issue I had with this volume – the author is much better at either dumb comedy or romantic drama than they are at actual action scenes. The final battle is somewhat confusing and brings in too many elements, and is not helped by it fading out once Soushi dies. This does lead to what I think are the strengths of both this volume and the series – the comedy and the romance. Both are not for everyone – they depend very much on being familiar with and not minding the standard Japanese romance tropes, where the girl is flustered and the boy is smooth and skilled. Better written is the relationship between Watanuki and Carta, where he pleads with her not to give up after she’s found she can’t change out of her skeletal form, and that he loves her no matter what she looks like. It’s my favorite part of the book.

In the end, I expect that how I feel about the first four volumes will be affected by what comes next, i.e. how much do the actions of the past weight on the seemingly reincarnated heroes? Certainly the last few pages play up the fact that reincarnated Ririchiyo is exactly the same as the one we’re familiar with, to the point of using the exact same starting gags. As for Soushi, he now wears glasses, but will he still have the uber-devoted attitude? What changes and what stays the same will make or break a series like this. And while I think it’s flawed, I’m interested enough in Vol. 5 to check it out.