New Seven Seas Licenses

8 Replies

Seven Seas has actually had a bunch of new stuff they’ve announced lately. I missed the first few due to being at NYCC when they announced it (they were not at NYCC themselves, being a very West Coast group). They also solicited some titles on Amazon which could be seen before the official announcement, but which I wasn’t able to mention till now as they sort of want blogger/press types to not do that (shut up, I deleted that tweet). So, what’s new from Seven Seas besides no new Hayate x Blade?

First off, on the heels of Yen Press license rescuing Alice in the Country of Hearts, we see that Seven Seas has picked up one of its sequels, Clover no Kuni no Alice – Bloody Twins (or Alice in the Country of Clover), which ran for one volume in Ichijinsha’s fantasy shoujo magazine Comic Zero-Sum. The Bloody Twins tag is to keep it separate from the manga other one-volume Alice in the Country of Clover spinoffs, also from Ichijinsha, which I suspect might follow if this does well.

With the demise of CMX, it looked as if Softbank Creative’s Flex titles were dead as well… until now! Angel Para Bellum will be coming out next year. Its license should be no surprise, as the artist also draws Dance in the Vampire Bund, one of Seven Seas’ big successes. It’s a fantasy about angels and demons, and should broadly appeal to the same audience as Bund’s.

This next one is very pleasant to hear about for those of us who want more titles from the late Media Factory’s Comic Flapper and fewer from their sleazier yet more popular Comic Alive. Christie: High Tension will be emerging as ‘Young Miss Holmes’ from Seven Seas, in the increasingly popular omnibus format. (My baseless speculation is that this allows them to get the titles out faster in case they do poorly, thus leading to fewer cancellations and less annoying of Japanese publishers for said cancellations. Also, omnibuses DO seem to sell a bit better.) Christie is about Sherlock Holmes’ niece (so the title change works fine), who like her uncle uses her logical brain to solve mysteries. Like Case Closed but which Shinichi was a cute blonde girl? Try this. The series is 7 volumes in Japan, and also has a spinoff. The author is best known over here for the Area 88 manga Viz adapted and then cancelled back in the floppy days.

I’ve discussed Girl Friends before, back when JManga put the first volume online. Now Seven Seas has licensed all five volumes from Futabasha (it ran in Comic High!), and will be putting them out a year from now in 2 big omnibus volumes. (Where this leaves JManga, I’ve no idea. Publishers have spoken before about being reluctant to give JManga their digital content which they can market themselves.) This is a cute series about a shy high school girl who becomes friends with a more outgoing type… then realizes that she’s feeling more than just friendship. It’s always nice to see more yuri series here in North America, and this one’s pretty light and fluffy as opposed to ‘everyone ends up dead or married to men’ like old-school yuri. Now, will yuri manga fans actually purchase it? Good question…

And I should talk about I Don’t Like You At All, Big Brother!! (Oniichan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki ja Nai n da kara ne!!), which is another Futabasha title, from its spinoff Web Comic High! magazine. It too will be coming out in omnibus format, and follows the adventures of a girl who is madly in love with her brother, but then discovers… (wait for it…) that they may not be related after all! But she also has to deal with the other girls vying for her brother’s affection! And it has that cover, as seen above. If you read Sankaku Complex without shuddering in self-loathing, then you’ll love this title. As with Girl Friends, I will believe its intended audience actually buys things with real money (as opposed to downloading them for free) when I see it.

Great job by Seven Seas in picking these up. I hope they do well.

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan, Vol. 4

1 Reply

By Nagaru Tanigawa and Puyo. Released in Japan as “Suzumiya Haruhi-chan no Yuutsu” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Yes, it still has a narrow audience. Yes, many of its punchlines are Osaka-style, i.e. someone says something dumb and the straight man shouts “Are you kidding?”. And yes, it’s still cutesy-wootsy and superdeformed a good deal of the time (though honestly, less so than in prior volumes). And yet I still love this series as it honestly makes me laugh a lot.

I’ll see if I can divide this review of Vol. 4 into 3 parts: the silly, the fanservicey, and the character development (which remains surprisingly large for a gag manga based on something else). For those looking for pure silly comedy, the manga has you covered. Asakura and Kimidori-san solve a murder in their own adorable way; Haruhi invents what must be the world’s only game of Extreme Othello, combining it with badminton to lethal effect; and best of all, Koizumi attempts to train the others to prepare for Haruhi during April Fools’ Day by having Mori dress up as Haruhi and say things she would normally say… which in the end appears just to be an excuse to humiliate and embarrass Mori. But in the most adorable way!

The fanservice chapters are not ashamed to be completely pandering, either. There’s nothing explicit – this is a manga that anyone could read, really – but the blatant school tag game with all the girls in swimsuits even lampshades it by having the male characters doing their own, unseen tag game elsewhere, while we ogle Haruhi, Mikuru and company in swimsuits. And at the end, Haruhi tries to come up with an exercise routine that gets far too sexy far too fast, going so far that even she ramps herself back after revealing a bit too much of her internal monologue out loud. Naturally, these fanservice shots are NOT superdeformed, as the whole point is to look at the fine female form.

Then there’s the Kyon and Haruhi relationship, which is very well handled in the two chapters it gets a focus. On one, Koizumi has rigged a contest so that he gets to pick what the losers do, and gets Yuki to rig it further so that Kyon and Haruhi are the losers. You can see where this is going; he forces them on a date, complete with his own pre-written script. The fun here is seeing Kyon and Haruhi’s punch-drunk reactions at having to say all this cornball romantic dialogue, and seeing the occasional glimpse of their real feelings almost derail things “Don’t go off the script, jerk!” is positively ADORABLE here, especially with the huge blush. Sadly, there’s one line they won’t cross, even if it’s for a bet. On a fluffier note, we get a rewrite of Live Alive where Kyon and Haruhi, both bored, decide to wanter the culture festival together – but they are not a couple.

Lastly, I was highly amused by the chapter where Nagato got her roommates drunk on amazake (aliens have no alcohol tolerance) and we discover the amazing effects that a hangover can have on Asakura. It is incredibly strange seeing her like that, and I have to wonder if it might have been a shout-out to the author’s other Haruhi spinoff, The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki. Best line of the volume comes here (trying not to spoil), from Yuki: “This must be what a parent feels like when their child surpasses them… the bittersweet sadness of parenthood…”

Only buy this if you like Haruhi. But if you do, it’s a hoot. And miles better than the ‘official’ manga is.

Ai Ore! Vol. 3

3 Replies

By Mayu Shinjo. Released in Japan as “Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero!” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shoujo Comic (“Sho-Comi”). Released in North America by Viz.

This is a turning point for Ai Ore! in many ways. It’s the last volume published before the move from Shogakukan to Kadokawa Shoten, which is why it reads very much like it’s ending. It marks a point where the series stops trying to be a satire or parody of these sorts of mangas and simply becomes another example of them, albeit a funny one. And it also has Akira develop to the point where, though I still have a few reservations, I can now admit without irony that I am enjoying this title.

For one thing, this volume doesn’t even pretend to be about Mizuki anymore. Akira is the star here, and most of what we see are his attempts to deal at being in love with Mizuki. He wants to win her affection and love, his hormones are raging at him to seduce her as soon as possible, and he’s getting bad advice all round from many of his friends – some of which, in fact, we’ve seen him use before in earlier chapters. Akira is trying to find a balance between ‘women like a strong, sexy guy who can take command’ and ‘I know what’s best for her because I am an asshole’, and it’s not as hard a line to cross as he would like.

This makes him stand out from other typical Shogakukan male heroes, even more than the cutesy pretty girl looks he’s stuck with. An excellent example is a chapter where a rival shows up – Tsubasa, another pretty boy who looks like a girl that Mizuki met and accidentally enthralled a couple of years earlier. He challenges Akira to a competition, with Mizuki being the winner. Akira, of course, accepts, and is very curt to Mizuki – “just sit back and wait for me to come claim you”, he notes, and you want to smack him all over again. The contest itself, though, which shows him basically letting his lecherous classmates practically rape him just so that he can get their vote – shows that power is not really what drives him at all. And a good thing too, as he’s so bad at using it.

The end of that chapter has Ran, the slightly more sensible of Akira’s two playboy friends, asking him “Have you given any thought to how Mizuki feels about this?” Well, no, he hadn’t. It’s only partly his fault – Mizuki is still the weak link in this story, though she’s not as bad as she has been. We don’t worry as much about her doubting her femininity or trying to act girly… but we also empathize with Akira, as her waffling really is driving the reader crazy now as well. Mizuki here, I believe, finally at least understands what love is, and that she’s madly in love with Akira. I just wish the couple had better communication. But then I say that about most manga couples.

In the last chapter, everything comes together. Mizuki says that she loves Akira, Akira realizes that this wasn’t something that he could have forced, no matter how he tried, and the two have now been intimate. As I said, it READS like an ending – readers of Shoujo Comic would be satisfied with the way it wrapped up here. Of course, if they also purchased Kadokawa Shoten’s Asuka, they would see the series continue – and so will we, with Vol. 4. Which will also see it return to standard 200-page format, I believe. In any case, finally recommended with few reservations.

Also, great title drop right at the end there, for folks who wondered what Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero meant.