Strobe Edge, Vol. 1

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By Io Sakisaka. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

As many readers of this blog know, give me a choice between a new series that’s daring, bold, experimental and avant-garde and a new series that’s more of the same as all the other series except with different bits, and I will go for the latter every time. I appreciate the value of alt-manga, but am far more happy reading Vol. 97 of Shoujo Girl X. Usually because every time I do, even if it seems like it’s going to be more of the same, there’s always something that ends up drawing me in. These series all have to compete in Japan with 7,000 other high-school romances. There needs to be something that stood out enough to have it be a success there and get licensed here. Which brings me to Strobe Edge.

The cover really says it all – it’s hard to look at and not feel ‘well, it’s a bit overly sweet, isn’t it?’ without even reading the content. And the first half of the book doesn’t seemingly do much to change that opinion. Ninako is naive and a bit flighty, but not overly ditzy. She’s got a group of close female friends (who so far have stayed her friends, yay!) as well as a male childhood friend that everyone assumes she is in love with, mostly as he is clearly in love with her and that’s how these things go. Ninako, however, isn’t sure what she feels for Daiki is love. And she has *no idea* what these feelings she has are when she runs into Ren, the school heartthrob and all-around mysterious guy.

As I said, so far so normal. If I told you Daiki was blond and Ren had black hair, I assume you’d be totally unsurprised. But gradually I started to realize that more thought was being put into the plot than I suspected. Ninako may seem flighty, but she thinks hard about everything, and once she realizes that what she’s feeling for Ren is love, all sorts of extra problems come up. As for Daiki, he is obviously the ‘unlucky childhood friend’ who is there to provide the love triangle, but this does not make his crush on Ninako any less weighty, especially as we see its origins. He’s a nice guy, as Ninako herself says, and we feel for him even as we root for Ninako to get together with Ren, because that’s how these things go.

The second half of this volume really picks things up, and I was quite startled a few times. Ren, for one, is not really the aloof loner type he presents… or at least not around Ninako, which is a good sign. Of course, things aren’t as simple as ‘if I just worked up my courage to confess, we’d be together’. Ren’s own life intertwines with Daiki’s in very unexpected ways, and as Ninako herself notes, when you fall in love with someone the feelings don’t merely vanish just because you get rejected. I suspect the plot of much of Strobe Edge will deal with that, given the large number of unrequited relationships we bring out here.

Strobe Edge begins with its heroine thinking about what it means to be in love, and I suspect that’s what the whole series is going to be about. It’s working with stock shoujo manga types, but what it’s doing with them is interesting. Which, as I said before, is exactly what I look for in ‘normal’ shoujo manga.

Missions of Love, Vol. 1

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By Ema Toyama. Released in Japan as “Watashi ni xx Shinasai!” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

There has been a certain growing trend in shoujo manga that gets licensed over here lately, pulling away from the overly perky/helpless female lead in favor of someone a lot more sarcastic, cold, and awkward. And I for one could not be happier. Yes, it can be argued that this type of shoujo doesn’t sell quite as well as Black Bird and the like, but its heroines are usually a breath of fresh air, especially given how they deal with the heroes, many of whom remain the same heartthrob of the school types.

Yukina, the heroine of Missions of Love, is not quite as sharp as the two other heroines she calls to mind, Kanoko from ‘The Secret Notes Of Lady Kanoko’ and Maria from ‘Devil and Her Love Song’. But then this did run in Nakayoshi, which caters to a much younger demographic than the other two titles. The author’s comments even notes that she was told this isn’t really the sort of thing Nakayoshi does. So I suspect that the goal here may be to see how long Yukina’s natural-born snark can win out against the narrative trying to get her to say ‘what is this strange feeling in my heart?’ This is not helped by this being her own goal as well.

Yukina is a secret popular cell-phone novelist, a genre that has not really taken off in North America yet… I think the best description would be drabbles strung together into a narrative. Her talent and intelligence have made her quite a draw, but her social ineptness means that her works lack a certain… heat. So she wants to find out how love feels, but is not callous enough to ask some normal guy to show her what this Earth thing called kissing is. That’s when she spots Shigure, the popular male in the class, getting hit on by someone else. And rejecting her politely. And then… ticking off her name in a book?

Yes, finding out about love is all right as long as there’s no actual emotion involved. So now that she knows Shigure is a jerk, she can feel free to emotionally blackmail him. This is the meat of the book, and also the best part, for several reasons. Shigure has gotten through life by observing people’s likes and faults and playing up to them – he even has a notebook full of traits to note – but Yukina is not only better than him at it but doesn’t need to write it down. He tries to blackmail her right back a few times, unsuccessfully. She’s probably just what he needs. Yukina, meanwhile, is not without fault – she hasn’t mentioned her books at all (she is, after all, a secret author), so her come-ons to Shigure sound even weirder than we know them to be. It’s hard to learn about love when you have no concept of real social interaction.

I didn’t even mention her cousin, who seems poised to be the romantic rival if the cliffhanger to Vol. 1 is anything to go by. But I suspect he won’t be too much of an issue. The reason to read this is the same reason we enjoy watching the best screwball comedies – to see the guy and girl exchange barbs and grow closer even as they both try to manipulate each other. Good stuff. (And, despite the Japanese title, decidedly G-rated.)

Negima! Magister Negi Magi, Vol. 36

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By Ken Akamatsu. Released in Japan as “Mahou Sensei Negima!” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics.

With this volume, we finally wrap up the Magic World arc that began almost half the series ago. Even Ken Akamatsu admits that it took a lot longer than expected (which may have ended up having a bigger influence on the end of Negima itself – more on that later), but at least the finale gives us a lot of the shonen tropes we like Negima for best: lots of shonen battles, enemies becoming friends, everyone reaching out with their bonds of friendship to save a fellow classmate… you know, the works.

First off, despite Negi’s best efforts, he and Fate are destined to fight for this final battle. Even if you get the sense that it’s less due to a difference of opinion and more because they really want to. This leads, as many shonen fights do, to a flashback, where we get a better look at the inner workings of Fate’s mind. He’s not just a stoic, he’s a cynical stoic, deliberately crafted to be different from the arrogant and hotheaded Secundus by his creator. This seems to annoy Fate, who I think wants some surety in his life. Unfortunately, part of being human is lacking that surety. As he flashes back to a girl he was unable to save, and to Nagi and Rakan talking about what humanity really means, he finally gives in, and agrees to at least listen to what Negi says.

If you know shonen, you know what comes next. That’s right, they’re both taken out by an influx of MORE enemies. Negima does seem to rejoice in hammering on its cliches, but it does so in such a assured way that you can’t really blame it. This is a Boy’s Own story, and this is how they go. So the enemies show up, and then our heroes have their own teachers and mentors show up to help them, and so forth. Meanwhile, the actual 3-A class is tasked with trying to wake up Asuna, who is still being a giant unconscious magic battery. Naturally, this requires the entire class, even those nowhere near the battle, as well as Yuna and Sayo (conveniently cured).

And it works, and thus Asuna enters the fray (the cover should have clued you in). And this… well, this is where Akamatsu starts to go a bit off the rails. He’d already had pacing problems earlier, resolving Setsuna and Mana’s fights in about 4 pages so he could get them out of the way (and we never see Tsukuyomi again, as the extras for this volume note). Now he has to deal with what happens when one of your characters is basically The Messiah. And, just like Usagi in Sailor Moon, he knows that if you’re going to have the Messiah card, you have to play it eventually. And so, after finally defeating the Lifemaker (whose identity is a plot point that isn’t remotely resolved here, so I’ll ignore it), Asuna proceeds to resurrect everyone and everything. And I mean everything – we hear her muttering about plants and animals as well.

And while this leads to many heartwarming scenes of our heroes being reunited with those who sacrificed their lives for them, it does bring up the point of where to go from here. Any ongoing threats are going to be next to impossible to take seriously. And by now the audience of Negima really is not going to be content to going back to the wacky “oh no, sensei saw me naked” Love Hina shenanigans. We have a giant pile of unanswered questions – Nagi, Arika, Asuna’s fate, Chao – but are those going to require a whole new adventure arc?

Despite the many, MANY unanswered questions, I’ll be honest with you – if you want a very open-ended but satisfying ending to Negima, Vol. 36 is a really good place to drop the series. For those who want to see how everything is resolved in the last two volumes, I will be reviewing them in time. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Still, this volume is recommended, provided you aren’t allergic to Asuna Ex Machinas.