Maid Shokun Volume 1

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By Akira Kiduki and Nanki Satou. Released in Japan by Wani Books, serialized in the magazine Comic Gum. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

I have to admit, this title may be the surprise of my entire spring. There were so many things working against it. It’s about a maid cafe, has a cute girl showing lots of thigh on its cover, and it runs in Comic Gun, home of Ikkitousen (Battle Vixens) and other titles known for being basic fanservice. I’d heard that there might be some yuri, but again, was expecting the ‘ooooh, can I feel your breasts’ sort of yuri you get in seinen magazines.

I’m here to tell you that I was mostly wrong, and that this is a charming and perfectly reasonable title to come out from the late Tokyopop. The basic premise is what I expected: a group of women work for a maid cafe in Akihibara catering to otaku, and one day take in a girl from the country who’s come to the city to go to college. She ends up working there due to a series of wacky circumstances, and her eager to please, earnest personality proves to be both a boon and a liability. Will she be able to make friends and do well, even as her fellow co-worker seemingly hates everything she says and does?

Despite Chiyoko being the star, she’s actually the least interesting part of the manga, being your basic naive yet bubbly heroine who wears her heart on her sleeve (she has a very Club 9 feel to her, only without the confidence). I was far more interested in the other supporting cast. Heine is in charge of the maids, and seems to be the sensible one with a good head on her shoulders. She also seems to have some sort of past with Arumi, the aforementioned maid who’s angry all the time and can’t warm up to Chiyoko. A lot of this seems to be due to her having a standard ‘tsundere’ personality, but we haven’t actually seen the dere yet in this series. There are suggestions of something else, though, such as Arumi being ‘different’ from the other maids at the cafe, and Heine darkly hinting that Arumi has to obey all her commands. It’s an intriguing plot thread that I would look forward to seeing resolved in future volumes if there were any.

But the big surprise to me was Chapters 4 and 5, which go into detail about two of the other maids, Hachiya and Airi. A couple of past chapters have gone into detail on Airi being stalked by one of the cafe’s patrons, and what they can do about it without upsetting the other otaku who go there to essentially gaze at cute maids. As this happens, it becomes clear that Hachiya (who wears a bartender’s outfit, and was very much ‘the butch one’ even before this chapter) and Airi are actually lovers, something that accidentally gets revealed to the others. It’s amazing how realistically this plays out – one maid, Pamiru, finds it hilarious and disgusting at the same time. Arumi doesn’t care that they’re gay, but says they either have to break up or one has to quit, as their being together hurts the cafe. Heine is away. And the two of them have been fighting anyway.

We get a flashback to Airi’s past… where she’s shown to have been a prostitute. She runs into Hachiya, who is dressed as a man and acting as ‘escort’ to other women. After saving Airi from a crazy customer, the two slowly fall in love… and when Airi finds out the truth about Hachiya’s gender, she decides that she loves her anyway. Unfortunately, societal and work pressures are adding up. Airi feels she’s being a useless burden to Hachiya, and Hachiya is convinced this is a ‘phase’ Airi is going through.

It may seem anticlimactic, but what ends up happening is that they end up talking to each other, and resolving everything. This isn’t as humorous or earthshaking as a series of wacky manga coincidences, but far more realistic. Hachiya feels they should break up as Airi is young enough to get married and have a normal life. She even notes that were she to die, Airi would get nothing from her estate, the way the world works now. Airi, who I think gains more confidence the more she sees how uncertain Hachiya is, tells her to shut the hell up and that she plans to love her for the rest of her life. It’s a very sweet scene, but it’s also rather rare in its honest discussion of what being a gay couple in Japan is like. The manga is worth getting for these two chapters alone.

There’s a lot of discussion of the maid cafe environment, which in 2006 (the year this debuted) was still somewhat of a new thing. Arumi and Chiyoko have a long discussion about the cafe possibly being rated as ‘adult entertainment’, and what that would mean – both minuses and pluses. The last chapter features Chiyoko at college, having been secretly given alcohol by a couple of horny guys, being rescued by one of the maid cafe patrons – and he’s now incredibly awkward with her, as the ‘veil’ that exists between the maids and their clientele seems to be removed. Given that over and over again the manga has emphasized the ‘look but don’t touch’ aspect of the maids in the cafe, it actually does feel like a crisis rather than a goofy romance starting up.

Again, I note this is a Tokyopop series, so we will not be getting any more volumes here in North America. And no, it’s not scanlated online either. And hey, Volume 4 is sold out at Amazon.jp, so you can’t even buy the Japanese. I still recommend that you buy this manga, which rose way above what I thought it would be. And if you happen to find out what happens in the remaining three volumes, please let me know.

Brief Reviews On Sundry Manga: The Sequel

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Yes, once again I have several volumes that I can’t seem to find several paragraphs worth of things to say, so will pile them all together in order to winnow down my review pile.

Kamisama Kiss 3: Yes, it’s still suffering from not being Karakuri Odette. Which is a shame, as it’s quite a likeable manga. We get a lot of plot points about how romances between humans and yokai go in this world, and how much “forbidden” tends to be actual lip service. Nanami is kidnapped by a snake yokai (who then turns into a bishie – this is shoujo, after all). I quite liked the fact that Nanami’s quiet “Tomoe, enough.” was sufficient to get him to listen to her and stop his rampage, which shows the bond of trust that’s developed between them since the first two volumes. The last chapter is more serious, featuring Nanami going back in time to see a Tomoe who’s seemingly far crueller and more dangerous than the one she knows. In the end, it’s a little more mainstream and typical than her previous series, but that’s also helped it run longer in Hana to Yume as well.

Toriko 5: This volume continues the search for the Regal Mammoth, and as such is basically just a bunch of fights. It was hard for me to see one group coming at the mammoth from one path and the other choosing a different one without thinking of The Five Doctors, honestly. And like The Five Doctors, each path proves to be fraught with peril. Toriko actually has to let his savage self take over in order to drive away some predators (and trust me, it’s a nightmarish sight), which Sunny and Komatsu travel through a deadly marsh. We are once again reminded of the ethics that govern Toriko’s universe, as Sunny and Komatsu are horrified than Gourmet Corps is casually slaughtering the animals without using them for food – WASTE is the big sin here. The Regal Mammoth does indeed prove to be huge – so huge that our reunited gang must journey INSIDE the animal to get at its prized meat within. As always, this is big dumb goofy Shonen Jump fun.

Blue Exorcist 2: Things settle down in this second volume, as Rin and Shiemi continue their school life at True Cross Academy. We meet a few new cast members, who are very much shonen ‘types’ – there’s the frustrated hothead who derides the hero for being lazy and stupid, but turns out to be far too similar to him for everyone’s tastes. And there’s the bitchy girl who ‘allows’ Shiemi to be friends with her in return for waiting on her hand and foot (and who seems to be the kid who was bullied when she was young, now trying to live life on the other side). Naturally, by the end both are reluctant allies to our heroes – Ryuji after he sees Rin’s bravery in the face of danger (albeit somewhat stupid bravery), and Izumo after getting told off by her ‘normal’ friend and being rescued by Shiemi’s basic goodness and niceness. It’s decent stuff, and I kept turning the page, but it hasn’t really risen above cookie-cutter shonen level yet.

Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan 3: This had several interesting plotlines going through it. We wrap up last volume’s big fight, and get a highly interesting revelation: Rikuo’s been playing everyone (and the reader) all this time, and is far more in control of his life than previously suspected. Of course, this also leads to organizational problems, as Rikuo also tends to be merciful, and when you want to be the leader of a bunch of cut-throat yokai, mercy is something that needs to be explained. There then follows a short plotline with Kana being stalked by a yokai that has been killing children on their 13th birthday. Naturally she’s rescued by Nura… unfortunately, this leads to her falling for the Nura side of Rikuo’s personality, and asking if Rikuo can hook her up. Ah, secret identities… (There’s also a great mirror of Kana spying on Rikuo and Tsurara at the start, with Tsurara doing the same at the end when Kana is being ‘overly friendly’… romance is likely not important in this series, but it’s sometimes cute to see. Finally, a new gang of yokai comes in to ‘take over’, and start by going after Rikuo’s grandfather. Which is unfortunate, as he’s hanging out with Yura, who most likely would try to kill him if she knew who he was. Nura is trying to do the yokai tales as a mafia/yakuza-type story, and so far it’s working pretty well.

Negima! Magister Negi Magi Omnibus 1

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

First off, let’s get the translation thing out of the way before we get to reviewing the actual content. As I’ve noted before, when Del Rey licensed Negima, they hired famous comics and SF writer Peter David to do the adaptation, which he did through Volume 5. It is known for being notoriously loose, with a ton of dialogue simply being rewritten entirely. Now, sometimes I’m OK with this (I’m an Excel Saga fan, after all, and I’m fairly sure Excel doesn’t quote the Geto Boys in the original Japanese), but in the case of Negima, it actually alters the personality of many of the characters. Konoka calling Asuna a cheesehead draws attention to the adaptation, which isn’t something you want to do. After Peter David left, Trish Ledoux (known for her work on Ranma) started to adapt, and many things got smoothed out, but then she left about 6 volumes later, and we got a new team, etc. Now, this is not uncommon for long-running manga series here in North America. Unfortunately, Del Rey had no editors (or at least bad ones), so there was little to no continuity between volumes. (I’ve yelled at them about this before as well, in my Zetsubou-sensei reviews.)

Now Kodansha decided to re-release Negima (still their best-selling series here) as an omnibus. They’d actually done this before for Barnes & Noble bookstores only several years ago, but it was the old Peter David adaptation, so there was no need for fans to get it. By now someone there had heard about fan derision of the early volumes, so hired the Nibley twins (the series’ current translator/adaptors) to clean up a few of the more egregious moments in the series. On starting this project, the twins realized it would be a lot less aggravating to simply re-translate and adapt EVERYTHING, which they then did. And it was well-worth it, because this is definitely a re-release fans of Negima should get. The dialogue reads far more realistically and in character, nothing seems to jar (there is one ‘Southern Master’ in Asuna’s dialogue, but I’m pretty sure that was left in as a joke), and it doesn’t call attention to itself. We can now read Negima (mostly) as it was meant to be, and I thank Kodansha and the Nibleys for that.

Now, as for the manga itself. I went into it with my opinion that the first three volumes sucked, and that the series only started to get really good with the Kyoto arc starting in Volume 4. I am now prepared to revise that opinion. Volumes 2 and 3 turned out to be better than I expected, with 2 in particular giving us some nice character development and building up the campus as being more than simply a really big private school. Volume 1, though, actually managed to be WORSE than I remember, and for those people who cannot power through bad writing to get to the good beyond it, well, I’m sorry, you’re never going to get into Negima.

I have also mentioned before the story of how Negima came to be what it is. After finishing the love comedies A.I. Love You and Love Hina, Akamatsu was somewhat weary of harem manga and decided to do a shonen fighting series with a young male protagonist. Kodansha’s editors at Shonen Magazine, however, has no confidence in his ability to write action-filled battles, and told him they wanted him to write more of what sold like hotcakes – lots of girls, lots of fanservice, and lots of wacky situations. So we get Negima, where 10-year-old magical school graduate Negi Springfield is sent to a huge private school in Japan to teach a class full of thirty-one 14-15 year old girls. On his first day, he runs into Asuna Kagurazaka, a fiery girl with a short fuse and a fierce temper, who is not Naru from Love Hina at all, except yes, she is.

Negi’s specialty is wind magic, and being 10 years old, he has not completely mastered self-control of this. This means that when he sneezes, clothing tends to fly off of the nearest females, including Asuna. If this sounds incredibly lame, that’s because it is. Luckily, after a volume or two, it stops being every single chapter, and starts to be used in the obvious ‘comedy’ chapters, or as a balance to an overly serious battle. Here, however, Volume 1 seems to consist of endless pages of Asuna being humiliated, stripped, and broken. And because Negi’s ten years old, she doesn’t even get to beat him up the way Naru could hit Keitaro. More to the point, these early characterizations of Negi and Asuna are off enough to be irritating as well. Negi, known in later volumes for being ‘overly mature and serious’ for his age, if naive, is far more bratty and child-like here. As for Asuna, I have grown to like her character a lot, but there’s a reason that people kept comparing her to Naru in Love Hina at first. All she does is yell and scream.

Luckily, things do not stay this way. Negima is far more of an ensemble cast than Love Hina, and we begin to see Negi interacting with the other girls. We meet Nodoka, the shy librarian whose life he saves on the first day, and who promptly falls for him. We see the ‘Baka Rangers’, five girls who get the worst grades in class for various reasons. We meet grumpy hacker Chisame, whose job it is to lampshade how ridiculous this class is. And, in Volume 3, we get our first major villain in Evangeline A.K. McDowell, a centuries-old vampire who is currently trapped at the school and in the body of a 10-year-old girl. The relationship between Negi and Asuna also mellows here, and once she starts to see Negi as more of a little brother (don’t start, shippers) than a bratty kid out to ruin her life, her own character becomes much more of a ‘big-sister’ type and we begin to like her much better.

It’s very strange seeing Evangeline at this stage in the manga. She’s certainly a threat, but there’s no sense that she’ll be impossible to defeat – indeed, once Negi and Asuna become battle partners, she’s almost easy to take down. I get the sense that the feedback Akamatsu got from readers and editors was HUGE for Evangeline, and so he may have decided that he needed to give her more to do. Certainly by Volume 6, when Evangeline next lets her powers loose, she’s one of the most formidable foes in the entire series.

I should mention the fanservice again, because it’s really, really a major part of this omnibus. If you crack open the book to a random page, there’s a good chance you will see a teenage girl in a state of undress. As I noted earlier, I think Akamatsu was trying to press the harem aspect really hard at the start of the series in order to get the series popular enough that he could start to do what he wanted to do. So you get tons of bath scenes, and school measurement days, and “Oh no, you’ve seen my panties now!” type humor. Given Negi is ten years old, this is a little discomfiting, but at this stage there’s little evidence that anyone is serious about things – Nodoka’s love for Negi is seen to be mostly a crush, and the one girl we worried about (Ayaka) is shown to be seeing Negi as more of a little brother replacement than anything else. So the fanservice tends to mostly be “look, I can draw all varieties of naked girls!” type service. As the series goes on, this gets less and less, but it never entirely goes away – these days, he tends to write normally for about a dozen chapters, then toss in a full chapter of nothing but nudity to counterbalance.

In the end, I am glad that we’re getting this re-release, and that it will apparently continue through at least Volume 9. Negima may have started out as nothing more than Harry Potter meets Love Hina, but Akamatsu has crafted quite the epic fantasy adventure, and though he has not quite fulfilled his promise of making all 31 girls important to the story, he’s come damn close. Negima fans, obviously, should get this. Folks curious about the series should as well, but just be aware – the first third of this omnibus is terrible. It gets much better.