Alice in the Country of Clover: Cheshire Cat Waltz, Vol. 1

1 Reply

By Quin Rose and Mamenosuke Fujimaru, based on the game by Quin Rose. Released in Japan as “Clover no Kuni no Alice – Cheshire Neko to Waltz” by Ichijinsha. Released in North America by Seven Seas.

I was less than impressed with the first spinoff from the Alice books, Bloody Twins. This second one promises a much longer and more involved plotline – it’s 7+ volumes in Japan – and like the heart volumes has Alice bonding with a lot of people while clearly being romantically paired off with only one of them. Here it’s Boris, the Cheshire Cat of Alice’s dream world.

The premise, supposedly, of the ‘Clover’ world is that the player, playing Alice, did not actually pick anyone while playing the ‘Hearts’ game – which involved a love based on passion. So the world changes to the ‘Clover’ country, where Alice once again interacts with most of the cast she knows (Julius is gone, and I missed him), along with a few new characters, and tries to see if she can find a love based on ‘companionship’. The manga thus fairly unapologetically plots out one of the ‘routes’ you can take as Alice in the game.

What this means in terms of an actual manga plotline is that Alice is uprooted from her comfortable life at the amusement park (as I said, different world from the Hearts manga) and dumped into a lonely forest. Much of this first volume involves her fear and uncertainty at having her life turned upside down right after she decided to stay there and not return home to her sister. Luckily, she eventually finds Boris, and through a series of wacky situations, ends up staying at the Hatter’s place and getting a new job.

Like Bloody Twins, this manga is focused far more on the romance than the Hearts manga. Alice’s sister is mentioned once or twice, but the implication we get at the end of Hearts is never brought up. Instead, we get the Hatter, and the Twins, and above all Boris, all trying to get into Alice’s pants. I’d mentioned in Bloody Twins that there was a far more sexually suggestive air to the book, and that continues here – at one point the Hatter says ‘So maybe you’ll *stay* if I make you *come*’ and his implication is clear. Of course, this manga series – and the original games – were written for female fans, not male ones. As a result, the tendency to try to keep all the harem characters virgins so as not to offend male otaku is absent. Nothing actually happens here, but I would not be terribly surprised if Alice and Boris come together – so to speak – in the future.

This volume does tend to get a little aimless at times, and risks being as light and frothy as Bloody Twins was. The good thing, though, is that it’s not afraid to show how emotionally damaged all its cast is. Alice and Boris are both filled with doubts and unfulfilled needs, and can’t communicate well at all – part of Alice’s worries are that Boris doesn’t love her as much because he’s a cat deep down. Meanwhile, thankfully Peter White and Ace are both in this universe as well, and they’re as insane as ever – Peter is the worst stalker ever, and Ace always seems to be one step away from a mass murder spree. If the title can balance its romantic comedy elements with the discomfort at its heart, it should prove just as fun as the original.

SDCC Round-Up

6 Replies

Once again, I was not at San Diego Comic Con this year, but I have access to The Internet, so can offer my unsolicited opinions anyway. :) SDCC over the last few years has been more ‘media’ oriented than ever, so it’s no surprise that the manga news was relatively quiet, though there were a couple of ‘big news’ items.

Viz was the first panel, and didn’t have any major print manga announcements. However, they did debut their Android VizManga app at last. I downloaded it to my phone. There were initial hiccups with zooming and availability, but as I look at the site this morning, both are fixed, though the zoom seems to be very fussy – I had to go forward and back a bit to get to the size I wanted. I didn’t initially have my Excel Saga volumes available for download, but that seems to have resolved itself as I type this. No doubt there will be improvements and upgrades, but this is a good first step for Viz in stepping away from the iMarket. The other big news of interest for manga fans was the Nausicaa boxset, which looks impressive, and apparently will have a poster.

Kodansha came next. Obviously, their big push was for Sailor Moon, which has done very well for them. I was a bit disappointed that they did not announce the two ‘short story’ volumes that come after the 12-volume re-release – I hope there isn’t a hold-up with Takeuchi. (The rumor is she asked them not to put the extras in the NA versions, though that is of course merely a rumor.) They discussed previously revealed releases: Genshiken: 2nd Season in September; Missions of Love (aka Watashi ni xx Shinasai!) in November, and Battle Angel Alita: Last Order 16 in December, which moved companies in North America just as it did in Japan. Alita also gets an omnibus so folks can catch up on what they missed – I presume the omnibus is only of Last Order, rather than the original series.

The new announcement was that of Negiho!, a spinoff/alternate universe of the original Negima series that was not written or drawn by Akamatsu but apparently had his consent. The premise is that the majority of the female students in Negi’s class are kindergartners, and Negi is their 15-year-old teacher that they all get crushes on. It started in one of Kodansha’s magazines for kids, but rapidly moved to a shonen spinoff Bessatsu Shonen Magazine as everyone realized it was more otaku-oriented. It’s meant to hit all the moe and cute buttons at once, so if you like cute little moe girls, you should enjoy it. Further, deponent sayeth not. >_>

JManga was the big news of last year’s SDCC, and they did their best to make this year the same. They are close to finally getting the iOS and Android apps for their site, and those should be going live in October – and that includes Android tablets.

They announced a few new titles coming out in the next couple of weeks, the big surprise of which to me was Sun-Ken Rock, a martial arts yakuza manga set in Korea that runs in Shonen Gahosha’s Young King. It’s… a very, very Young King title, let me tell you, and I would definitely expect to hit that ‘yes, I am over 18’ button if you plan on reading any of it.

There’s also a much-anticipated BL title: Dousei Ai (Same-Sex Love), from the author of After School Nightmare. It’s an old Biblos title from the 1990s, so I’m going to guess it ran in Be x Boy. It apparently has a complex plot with multiple protagonists.

JManga also announced at the last minute (literally: they got the OK to announce it minutes before the panel) that they will be working with Kodansha to rescue some of the old North American titles that were coming out via Tokyopop and Del Rey but are now either out of print or were killed for low sales. They can’t say what they are, but there are several I’d love to see. Love Attack? Kindaichi Case Files? Moyashimon? School Rumble? The possibilities are limitless! Speaking of Kodansha, they’re joining with Shueisha and Futabasha to sponsor a translation contest for JManga, the grand prize being a trip to Japan. Contestants get either a shoujo Shueisha title, a seinen Kodansha title, or a seinen Futabasha title. No word on whether the winners end up on the site – if so, it would mean Shueisha would join Kodansha in finally letting some of their works on the JManga site. Which can only be great. All in all, a very good panel for JManga, and I’m pleased to still see them doing well 1 year on.

Normally, Udon’s video-game based manga is not one I pay attention to all that much. (We can basically guess Silent Mobius was cancelled by now, right?) But this time around they announced the start of an artbook line, with Evangelion’s Chronicle: Illustrations leading the way. The intriguing one for me is the Read Or Die archive, which apparently takes in both the OAVs and TV, and a Haruhi Suzumiya book as well. Most artbooks are 75% pictures and 25% text at the back, so get imported a lot by fans who don’t care they can’t read 1/4 of it. If there are some cool interviews or the like with these, it would definitely justify a purchase.

Yen Press also had a few goodies to tell us about. The big one was leaked a little early by Amazon.uk (really, Amazon takes all the fun out of company panels these days), but that’s OK. It’s BTOOOM!, a survival game title for the video game fan from Shinchosha, running in their Comic Bunch line. The covers, at least in Japan, are parodies of real-life ‘game covers’ you’d see for the X-Box, Playstation, etc. – let’s hope those can stay. It should do quite well for action fans.

Another intriguing title for Yen was Momoiro Shoten e Youkoso, aka Welcome to the Erotic Bookstore. This is a comic essay series from Media Factory (did it run in Flapper?) about, well, a bookstore that decides to add a few toys to their line. It’s going to be digital only, possibly both to avoid bookstore issues with the content and also as it would cost less than printing it out. I’m definitely intrigued, though – these sort of titles almost never get licensed over here.

Lastly, there is Another, a 5 volume (4 + prequel) manga based on a horror light novel, which Yen has also licensed. Yen says it hopes to put out more novels in the future, which hopefully shows that Book Girl is at least not selling poorly. The manga ran in Kadokawa Shoten’s Young Ace, and is about a classroom that features a girl that everyone seems to ignore, and who looks like Abiru Kobushi from Zetsubou-sensei. Between Higurashi/Umineko and this, Yen seems to be dipping its toes more and more into the horror market. Hopefully it sells scarily well! (slap) I’m sorry, that pun was uncalled for.

Shonen Jump Alpha had one new announcement, with a series so new I don’t have a picture of it. From what I have seen of Takama-Ga-Hara, though, it seems the sort of manga that is very much in line with all the other Jump manga that currently run in Alpha. It’s ‘that Jump sort of manga’, if you know what I mean. They’re also speeding up Blue Exorcist a bit in order to catch up with Japan; it will be appearing 2 chapters a week for a month, then will be every month, 2 weeks after Japan (as with the other Weekly Jump titles).

There was some disappointment on Twitter that the popular mid-level Jump series were once again ignored by Viz. Sket Dance, Kuroko no Basket, Beelzebub, Medaka Box, and Nisekoi. All but the last even have anime series that could be tied in. Though, notably, none of them have anime series with a dub. The reason that we’re seeing Takama-Ga-Hara and Barrage, I expect, is that they’re low-risk high-reward investments. They’re the type of title casual Jump readers like. If they sell well, great. If they bomb in Japan and end after 3 volumes, well, a new series can replace it that is also low-risk. On the other hand, licensing, say, Sket Dance would require releasing 24 volumes in a hurry to catch up with Japan. Same goes with all the others I listed. Nisekoi is popular in Japan, and only has a few volumes to its name, but it has a different problem; it’s a romantic comedy with no supernatural content. I can’t even recall the last Jump manga Viz licensed without some type of fantasy element. Was it Strawberry 100%? In any case, I’d love to see all these titles, but sadly can understand why they were once again not mentioned at Jump’s panel.

And so that’s a wrap; I don’t think today has any major manga content, at least not of the ‘new licenses’ variety. Any thoughts or opinions? For a slumping market, I thought this was a pretty good SDCC; certainly we’re seeing more evidence that digital is the wave of the future.

Olympos

1 Reply

By Aki. Released in Japan by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Zero-Sum. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Yen Press has occasionally taken a flyer on short series that they can release as omnibuses, things that are somewhat off the beaten path. Sometimes this works out well (Dragon Girl), sometimes not so well (Sasameke). Olympos, a josei series about a petulant god and his captive human, seems to fall somewhat between those two camps, though I am ultimately pleased to have read it.

After a very well-handled fakeout of an opening, where we get teased about who the actual protagonist is supposed to be, things settle down. Ganymede, who people may recall from mythology, has been taken from his life and brought to a beautiful yet empty ruin, where he lives in stasis and occasionally has cross words with the god who has orchestrated all this, Apollo. The rest of the omnibus features Ganymede’s interaction with these gods, and Apollo’s attempts to amuse himself, which ultimately end up telling us more about the latter than the former.

The art style used here is very pretty and shoujo-esque. Deliberately meant to evoke androgyny, I found myself throughout the series forgetting that I wasn’t dealing with two women here. Even Poseidon, who is supposed to be big, burly and the masculine ideal, has a face that is very female. Of course, gender doesn’t really matter here – there’s no actual romance, except for the false start with Heinz and his doomed love. Still, the feminine faces are another way of showing that we’re dealing mostly with gods rather than man.

Easily my favorite part of the story was one that did not involve Ganymede at all. Instead, we flashback to a time when Apollo saw a temple being built in his honor, and began to interact with the sacrifice that had been offered to him. He refused to accept her, so she essentially hung around until he did. Iris, the sacrifice, is portrayed as a bit of a bubblehead, but her sweet and earnest devotion is rather cute, and you enjoy seeing Apollo open up to her, even if this leads to an inevitable conclusion.

By contrast, the weak point in the volume is Ganymede, who at the time we meet him has mostly grown rather resigned and bitter about his fate. There’s nothing particularly wrong with his conversations with Apollo, which tend towards the philosophical in regarding the nature of man and gods, but he does not stand out the way that the other gods (and Iris) do. Ganymede may be the focus of the book, but the show is clearly Apollo’s to steal.

I always enjoy seeing Japan dealing with Western mythology, and this is pretty well done. There’s a lot to think about here, involving Apollo’s relationship with Artemis, Poseidon’s desperate attempts at social climbing, and Zeus hovering above all, as unknowable to the other gods as they are to mankind. I do wish that the author had found a better way to go about conveying these ideas besides having everyone sit around and blithely discuss it. Don’t get me wrong, the discussions can be fascinating, but the utter lack of forward movement – even in the end, the manga simply stops rather than reaching a climax – makes the whole thing rather dry and dull, a bit like a textbook of Ancient Greece.