Attack on Titan, Vol. 11

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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.

Sometimes you want lots of characters and plot development, with surprise revelations out the wazoo, aadn sometimes you just want to watch big guys beating the snot out of each other. We actually get both here, but it’s the latter that gets most of the attention, as the cover art will attest. As if to announce that his artistic skills have at last improved to ‘passable’, Isayama gives us a chapter almost entirely devoted to Titan-Eren being a seething ball of rage and trying to punch all his problems. Amusingly, it almost works this time.

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The majority of this volume is devoted to the Armored and Colossal Titan trying to escape with Eren and Ymir, and Eren attempting to prevent that happening. This means the above-mentioned battle royale, and it’s actually a lot of fun. The use of the flashback is well-placed here, reminding us that Annie and Reiner may seem like obvious suspicious people now, but they were once our heroes’ trusted comrades. The interaction between Annie and Mikasa in particular is quite amusing, though as always I could do without Mikasa’s jealousy. Chapter 44 is named after a slogan in Mixed Martial Arts, and even as a Titan, Eren puts his moves to good use.

It’s all for naught, though, as the villains get away with what they came for. This does give us a chance to see a more vulnerable Mikasa, who has spent far too much time being either a supersoldier of a jealous would-be lover. Here we see a bit of the child that she was never allowed to be, and it’s very appropriate that Hannes be the one to show up and give her and Armin a pep talk. For all that Mikasa’s obsession with Eren is disturbing, at heart it’s the obsession of a girl who just wants to be near the one she loves most.

The second half of the volume teases us about revealing more information regarding Beast Titan and company, but in the end is far more interested in fleshing out its characterization. Reiner in particular is having difficulty coming to terms with his actions, and Ymir notes that he went so deep undercover that he actually seems to have separated the part of him that’s a soldier from the part of him that’s a Titan, and can’t really get them back together. (Bertolt doesn’t seem to have this issue, though it’s possible we’ll get to see more of his emotional issues next time.) As for Eren, possibly the funniest part of this volume is when he realizes that in order to get anywhere with Reiner, he has to control his emotions. This lasts about 3 pages before ending in screaming, as you would expect.

As for Ymir, it’s become clear she does *not* in fact know everything, but she can certainly make some educated guesses, and is just about to when Reiner threatens her obvious weak spot, and Ymir decides to clam up. (It’s played seriously, but I couldn’t help but imagine Reiner and Bertolt as the Vercotti Brothers from Monty Python – “Nice Krista you’ve got here, Ymir. Be a shame if something… happened.” “Yeah, fings break, don’t they, Ymir?”)

There’s even more that I could discuss (Hange is absolutely terrific in this volume), but I think you get the gist. Attack on Titan remains riveting reading. And we have at last ‘caught up’, so be prepared to wait till April to see what happens next. (Or just go to Crunchyroll and read up to the current chapter.)

Romeo And Juliet

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By William Shakespeare. First published in Britain in 1597 by John Dexter (Q1), then in 1599 by Cuthburt Burby (Q2). Review copy from ‘The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series’, edited by René Weis.

This actually came out in printed format a couple of years ago, but I never reviewed it, mostly as I don’t have much to say about Romeo And Juliet as a play. It’s sort of like giving your opinion on Hamlet – I’m not sure where to begin, or if my opinion is even relevant. I’d really never gotten as attached to it as I had to, say, Measure for Measure or Troilus and Cressida, though I can recognize its greatness. However, it coincidentally happened to be the first Arden Shakespeare release to come out as an ebook – I got mine on Kindle via Amazon – and so I thought I’d take a look, seeing what the ebook version can give to me, and also reassessing the play.

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I generally prefer Shakespeare’s comedies to his tragedies, so it helps that this one is structured very much like a comedy till the deaths start happening, with lots of back and forth between servants and comedic sexual banter from Mercutio. But where in Much Ado the characters might get a bit angry at times, here almost everyone is constantly on edge – the first scene has the two families come to blows pretty much because they walk past each other – and therefore even comedic situations can ignite a spark. This is not helped by Mercutio (again), who practically goads Tybalt into killing him. Mercutio is much beloved as a character, mostly as he’s a more ‘modern’, with it guy compared to soppy Romeo and raging Tybalt, but he’s just as bad at keeping his temper and not doing dumb things.

And so tragedy does happen, as the crazy scheme to feign Juliet’s death till Romeo can come spirit her away goes soup. Juliet is one of the great female characters created by Shakespeare (which yes, was created for a young boy to perform), and it’s not just to avoid scandal that the actresses are usually much older than the ‘about to turn 14’ Juliet is. The audience is willing to suspend disbelief in order to see a truly stellar piece of acting, and Juliet gives a lot of fuel to burn there. Not to sell Romeo short – he starts off as a callow youth going through the motions of being lovestruck, but the way Shakespeare changes his vocabulary once he meets Juliet is one of the best parts of the play.

I actually found it easier to read this as an ebook – the printed version has the annotations (telling you what this Elizabethan term meant, etc.) on the bottom of the page, but your eyes still bounce up and down constantly as you track when the next note is. With the ebook you can tap to the endnote, then tap right back, making it flow better. The endnotes and annotations are positioned well – some ebooks have issues with endnotes, meaning you have to wait 30 seconds for the book to ‘catch up’ to you before you can return to the text, but not here. The only issue I had was with the facsimile of Q1 being too small to read on my phone, but larger ebook devices shouldn’t have that problem.

The scholarship here is good – Weis’ introduction is informative without overstaying its welcome, and the text fuses together Q1 and Q2 in ways that make sense (and are explained throughout), making this a very readable Romeo And Juliet. I suspect it was chosen to debut the ebook editions simply as it was one of the more recent books – formatting books like these doesn’t come quickly – and would not be surprised if Coriolanus, which came out in 2013, is the next one we see. In any case, those looking to dip their toes into Critical Editions of Shakespeare’s plays or just wanting a good readable ebook Romeo and Juliet should greatly enjoy this edition.

Takasugi-san’s Obento, Vol. 1

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By Nozomi Yanahara. Released in Japan by Media Factory, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Digital Manga Publishing.

I must admit, as I got further and further into this series, it kept reminding me of a Hakusensha shoujo. The art style and tendency towards tinny textual comments in particular, not to mention that one of the characters is a straight up Expy of Shinobu from Teru Teru x Shonen. And sure enough, the author worked for Hakusensha for years doing one-volume short series for LaLa and LaLa DX before starting this series, her longest, for Comic Flapper. Flapper is sort of a seinen title, but in practice tends to be ‘shoujo for adult males’ a lot of the time. And for this title, the adult male is also the star of the show, as the titular Takasugi takes in his 12-year-old cousin after her mother dies.

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(The cover art has been slightly changed for the print edition, but this is the only image I could find.)

It’s honestly really hard not to compare this to Bunny Drop. Takasugi-san’s Obento has an awkward single male, around 31, who ends up being the relative who takes in a quiet and closed-off child still grieving for the death of her parent. Things are awkward but they slowly begin to bond and forge a life together, with the help of his workplace friends, one of whom begins to have a major crush on him. Takasugi seems to be somewhat bad at reading people’s hearts, despite having a Ph.D in Geography (I agree with Anna from Manga Report, by the way, clearly Cultural Anthropology is what’s implied here). Luckily, he improves over the course of the volume to a certain extent.

The interesting thing here is that he and Kururi, his cousin, end up bonding over their shared love of bentos, which his aunt made for him when he was growing up and then continued to make for Kururi when she was growing up. Kururi really comes alive when she’s comparison shopping and stressing over food prices, which are really important to her (to an extent her obsession with food almost reads like a function of her grief, but I think a lot of it was there to begin with). This is not a foodie manga by any means – you get no recipes, and will have to google to see what Kimpira Burdock is, as there are no translation notes – but the food seems to help tie everything together, both with Takasugi’s new family and with his friends and colleagues.

The series is seven volumes and still going in Japan. It’s also, unlike Bunny Drop, not scanlated and spoilered to hell and back. Which makes it all the more awkward that the first volume ends by showing us that 12-year-old Kururi has a giant crush on her 31-year-old cousin, and is drawing charts to see if they can get legally married. I’m hoping the series backs away from this pairing eventually – there is a running gag of everyone thinking Takasugi is a horribly creepy pervert that I had thought was there to show people the title wouldn’t go that way, and Kosaka (the colleague who has a crush on him) is adorable and I really want to see that relationship develop instead. But I can’t deny that this is Japan, and it’s possible that the manga might go down that road eventually. So if Bunny Drop burned you, consider yourself warned.

Overall, though, this was cute and adorable, and I managed to like all the characters quite a bit. I want to see Kururi grow and open up to others, and of course I want to see them eat more food. I will be checking out the next volume of this series (Due out in May, theoretically).