A Certain Scientific Railgun, Vol. 5

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

As we get into Vol. 5 of Railgun, it strikes me how many sociopathic killers are really in this series. It’s a whole lot. Misaka has found out about the experiment where 20,000 of her clones are killed off in order to force a Level 5 to get even higher, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Academy City and its dedication to science clearly continues to have a dark and sordid underbelly, and I doubt that the enemies this time will be as misguided but ultimately likeable as in the Level Upper arc.

First we have Accelerator, this arc’s “Big Bad”, who just finished brutally murdering Misaka 9982 at the end of last volume. The real Misaka is understandably upset by this, and does her best to try to make Accelerator see reason, or at least beat the shit out of him. This is especially true when she hears his motives are simply power, thus making the killings even more appalling. There’s a short battle, but a) it becomes clear that Misaka is severely outclassed by her enemy, and b) the clones stop things fairly quickly, pointing out that if he defeats the real Railgun now, that sort of ruins the experiment.

So now Misaka knows about the experiment, and has to stop it. The clones are of no help at all, as they don’t value their own lives so can only point out how easy it 9is to build new ones. She briefly has the help of Shinobu, a scientist who is trying to fix things after realizing that the clones are more than just lab rats. But for the most part it’s just Misaka straightforwardly trying to destroy the experiment by destroying every single site where it takes place – all 10 of them, supposedly used to combat muscular dystrophy. Yes, it’s Misaka the terrorist. Given that the hero of the main series, Touma, tends to solve problems by simply punching them very hard, it’s somehow fitting that our heroine is cut from the same cloth – if there are no more labs, there will be no more experiment.

Of course, things aren’t made that easy, as we also meet ITEM, the anti-terrorist group sent off to take Misaka out. These are basically child soldiers, with a slightly older leader, and are, like Accelerator, rather blase about all the people they have killed. The team is actually balanced nicely between two hotheads who glory in killing and torture, and two cool stoics who seem more blase about the whole thing. Naturally, it’s the hotheads who get most of the focus, and as we see a 10-year-old girl brag about the number of people she’s killed, we are reminded again what kind of environment this is.

And so in the end Misaka thinks she’s won, but somehow I doubt it. Blow up 10 labs, and 10 more will spring up. This is about defeating an entire scientific culture, and that will take far more than electroshock therapy. Luckily, we have an exciting cliffhanger, where… she sees Touma at a vending machine! Gasp! (This is actually more exciting to those who have read or seen A Certain Magical Index, as the two stories now join up, all of the past two volumes having been prelude.) Will she ask Touma for help? Or just be tsundere at him? It’s been a while since we’ve seen that side of her…

I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!!, Vol. 1-2

By Kouichi Kusano. Released in Japan as “Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki ja Nai n da kara ne!!” by Futabasha, serialization ongoing in the online magazine Web Comic High!. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

People follow trends. It’s just a way of life. When something is popular, the first instinct of a business looking for profit, or writer looking for a surefire seller, is ‘what did it do and how can I use that to replicate it?’ And this is fine sometimes. I’ve known many derivative works that have been very good and sometimes even surpassed the original. But too often someone goes too far. Either they miss the original point that was being made, or they deviate in an unacceptable manner, or they add too many other, equally trendy things to make a giant stew of trends that all cancel each other out.

And incest as a sexual thrill is, god help us, popular these days. Especially in Japan. Naturally, *genuine* incest seems to be saved for the actual porn magazines, but there’s no end of manga and (more importantly) anime that feature guys crushing on their sisters, and girls worshiping their brothers. Usually at some point they find out they aren’t related after all. Other popular trends in anime these days include the tsundere type who says mean things and hits the object of her affection as she’s too embarrassed. And let’s not forget the pretty, reserved princess type who secretly turns out to be a stalker and pervert.

If all this sounds like a lot of moe animes seen in the past five years, it’s by design. I’ll be honest, I had initially confused this title with ‘My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute’, which comes out next month by Dark Horse, and has a somewhat better reputation. IDLYAA,BB!! features Nao, who loves her older brother a lot (the title may have given that away), despite his being a somewhat perverse non-entity in these two volumes. She goes to wake him up every day by hitting him (and giving him calculated panty flashes) and throws out anything in his porn doujinshi that it’s brother/sister incest. In fact, when told that she’s actually not related to him after all, this *depresses* her briefly, as it ruins the incest fantasy she’s been going for for so long.

This may seem rather hardcore for what’s meant to be a typical seinen title for horny guys, but rest assured there’s no actual sex, merely piles and piles of suggestion (though I note this is the author’s first ‘mainstream’ work after years of drawing adult titles). And to be fair, Nao’s obsession is treated in-story as immature and wrong. Then we meet our second heroine, Iroha, a long-lost childhood friend who meets Nao’s brother after all these years and proceeds to sexually assault him. This is actually one of the few interesting scenes in the book – it’s presented as incredibly disturbing (after all, we’re meant to root for Nao), and her brother’s horrified reaction to it, and realization that he may have led to her turning out this way, is a brief moment of soul searching that could be interesting… if it weren’t undone by Nao and Iroha’s determination to make sure that their man stays perverted and does not ‘turn over a new leaf’.

There’s a couple more things to like here – Nao’s two female friends are meant to function as a Greek chorus of sorts, and their reactions towards the end of the book at all the slapstick are well done – but to be honest, I have rarely seen a manga that seemed to calculated to hit as many fetishes as possible as this one. If you enjoy perverse moe harem comedies, well, I think you’ll get a big kick out of this, though even the most hardcore fan might finish the volume and say, “Erm, isn’t this a bit over the top?”

Manga the Week of 8/22

There’s quite a variety of things coming out next week at Midtown from various sources. Let’s leap right in.

Dark Horse is ready to explode with new releases, which I think have only been delayed once or twice before hitting shops! We have Vol. 24 of Gantz, which you either avoid like the plague or automatically seek out. It’s a pretty polarizing title, but very good at providing what its fans want. There’s also a new Gate 7, CLAMP’s new gig, which continues to mix Japanese historical figures with pretty young men and women in a very CLAMP way. And there’s a new volume of Oh My Goddess, finally free of the reprints and ready to go forward! Unfortunately, in this volume everything’s gone to hell. No, wait, everyONE’s gone to Hell.

Digital Manga Publishing has Volume 9 of Itazura Na Kiss, which I’m hoping continues the excellent character development we saw in the previous chapters. Meanwhile, there’s also some new yaoi titles, including I’ve Seen It All, which I just wrote three different jokes about only to delete them all as being too pornographic, so I’ll just say it’s about a doctor and has one of THOSE covers. For those who like less creepy looking BL, there’s Man I Picked Up, whose title doesn’t do it many favors but whose cover and synopsis (man takes a vagrant guy home and gradually grows closer to him) sound a lot better. Meanwhile, in Countdown 7 Days 3, Onigawara is definitely dead. Well, mostly dead. And Replica hits is final volume, with an action packed finale.

It will be no surprise to anyone who knows me that Dorohedoro 7 gets my cover image. I love this series and its complicated universe more with each volume, and can’t wait to see how much trouble Caiman will get into. There’s also Ikigami Vol. 8, much to the surprise of many folks who thought it had been cancelled, and the 8th volume of the Tenjo Tenge omnibus, which brings us full circle, as Gantz and Tenjo Tenge really serve the same audience.

So what appeals to you this week?