A Bride’s Story Volume 1

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By Kaoru Mori. Released in Japan as “Otoyomegatari” by Enterbrain, serialization ongoing in the magazine fellows!. Released in North America by Yen Press.

There’s no getting around how handsome a volume of manga this is. Even leaving aside the presentation, where Yen has really gone above and beyond with hardcover and everything, it’s simply gorgeous to look at. Kaoru Mori became a popular “blogger” author over here with her previous series Emma, and this new series sees her chancing her focus while keeping the same things that made people come back to her Victorian England over and over again.

The manga itself takes place somewhere in Central Asia in the early 19th Century, and is a nice role reversal of the usual dealings at that time, where a young man in his early 20s would take a wife who was barely into her teens. Here we find that the groom, Karluk is only twelve years old himself, and that the bride is twenty years old! Scandal! It’s never explicitly stated why Amir is still unmarried at such an advanced age – so far I’m guessing it might have something to do with her hunting/gathering/all around awesome skills – but it’s definitely an unspoken worry, with many villagers stunned that she hasn’t had children.

The volume, for the most part, follows the story of her interactions with her new family and village, with a few side trips dealing with the children of Karluk’s sister, who are gleefully childlike and provide a nice contrast with the too-mature-for-their-years lead couple. Amir proves to be almost too good to be true, showing the village the art of hunting rabbits and how to track a nomadic tribe that can conceal its movements. There is a final chapter, luckily, that shows her less-than-perfect side, as we see her completely freaking out when her husband is bedridden with a bad cold. It seems clear that death has touched her in the past from her emotions here, and I hope we can find out more about that soon.

For those looking at the fact that the boy groom in the series is twelve years old and raising an eyebrow, I note that a) this is the early 19th century, and b) nothing seems to have been consummated so far. There is one shot of a naked Amir convincing her husband to sleep unclothed next to her to share body heat on a cold night, but his reaction seems to be seeing Amir as a mother figure more than anything else.

If there’s anything wrong with the series, it’s that things seem just a little too polished. It’s an excellent manga, with good characters who interact well, gorgeous art, and clear signs of an overarching plot that begins to get started about 3/4 through the volume. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that I’m looking at a painting in a museum rather than reading a modern manga. There is a coolness to Amir that doesn’t really allow you to get closer to her, even when she’s being nice and friendly. It makes me feel as if I can’t really love the manga as much as I want to.

Despite that, this is still a great pickup for Yen, and I hope that Volume 2, out in October, gives me a little more to work with.

Negima! Magister Negi Magi Volume 29

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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.

And so we come to the first of Kodansha’s release of the Negima series… which is exactly the same as Del Rey’s. And I am happy about that, as this is precisely what I wanted. No new translators, no new editors (not that Kodansha tells us who the editors are…), Just the same as before, giving us our cool shonen boy and his battle harem. Yes, one can argue they could bring us the limited edition covers that Japan gets, but as most of those tend to be ‘the regular cover only with fewer clothes’, I can see that it’s simply not worth it.

Given no one is going to be starting Negima with Volume 29, I’ll just type out a few thoughts instead of recapping what happens. We get three new pactios this chapter, and each one has its own point of interest. Ku Fei is still warring with her shyness, and so decides to whip out the standard female warrior cliche that she will only pactio with Negi if he defeats her. In general this can be an offensive cliche, but I think Akamatsu manages to deal with it here, because a) there’s a sense that Ku Fei is only doing it because of avoidance rather than any deep desire; b) It’s clearly shown that Negi needs to use his dark magic power in order to defeat her; c) there’s certainly no sense that Ku Fei is any weaker because of this, and in fact her pactio artifact seems to show that she’s only going to be powering up and getting stronger, and d) it’s a freaking arm wrestling match in the middle of a ballroom. I was very amused at Ku Fei joking that now that Negi has defeated her he’s required to marry her, as well as Chamo realizing how similar Chao and Ku Fei are – this has been a fan theory for some time, and Akamatsu loves to play around with those.

Meanwhile, not all 31 girls are gaga over Negi. Natsumi, the so-called ‘normal’ girl in the group, is dealing with her own insecurities, especially with Kotaro looking really sexy and her own age rather than in his actual form. I’ll give Akamatsu credit, he’s not backing away from the awkwardness that comes with a bunch of students falling in love with a ten-year-old or too. Most of the girls usually try to snap themselves out of it when reminded of such things, and indeed Natsumi refuses to pactio with the aged-up Kotaro, but rather his actual self – because this isn’t about love, but family. We get reminded of this when Natsumi asks what Kotaro thinks of the other girls he’s interacted with throughout the series, and he starts ranking them according to their battle potential. He’s a 10-year-old, and romance is barely registering on his radar. Instead, he notes that he feels that he wants to protect the girls he’s mentioned as they’re family to him. And that’s what allows Natsumi to pactio with him. (That said, there is a lot of romance here as well, and certainly I think Akamatsu is trying to have his cake and eat it too.)

As for Chachamaru, who we get reminded is actually 2 years old here, our favorite robot girl gets both the funniest and the most touching of the pactios. Chachamaru isn’t just dealing with romantic feelings for Negi – she’s worried she has no actual free will, being a robot. Evangeline has explained to Chachamaru that essentially she has free will if she believes she does – but this can be rather tricky, and self-doubt is starting to plague her. Enter Negi, who’s been primed by Asakura to wind her up… so to speak, and the connection between recharging Chachamaru and having sex with her has never been more blatant than it is here, as Negi’s ‘screwing’ her with full power drives her near the edge. And yet after this we get Chachamaru almost in hysterics, as she panics that if she pactios with Negi there will be no card – that she isn’t alive enough to deserve one. And in fact, as they begin the pactio, this is what seems to happen. Negi is a shonen hero, and through shonen determination – and awesome kissing power – manages to win the day.

Incidentally, Chachamaru’s ‘Hwa?’ is the funniest moment of the volume, bar none.

But with all that over with, we’re back to the plot, as Negi is called to bring three allies and meet up with Jerkass Senator Kurt Godel. He takes Nodoka and Asakura, presumably for their information-gathering abilities, and Chisame, because of their deep love. No wait, it’s because she’s there to slap some sense into him. It just SOUNDS like he’s saying it’s due to their deep love. As Chisame notes, he just can’t help sounding like a ‘natural-born gigolo’. As it turns out, though, bringing Chisame was a very bright thing to do, as Kurt is trying to goad Negi into a rage-fueled attack, by bringing up memories of the attack on his village years ago. Negi completely loses it, and while Nodoka’s tears are able to get him to turn aside for a bit, it’s Chisame’s slap and lecture that really does the trick. (By now, Chisame is a much better Asuna than Asuna ever was.) We also get to see Asakura really pissed off, which I believe is a first.

And so Kurt starts to explain things, which leads us into another flashback. This seems to be the second half of Rakan’s story from before, telling us what happened after Negi’s mother and father supposedly ‘won’ over the bad guys. Things are never quite that simple… and though we end on a cliffhanger, it’s becoming apparent that what’s really needed here is a scapegoat.

There’s a lot going on here, and I think if you’re a Negima fan you’ll love this to bits. It’s got fighting, plot exposition, fanservice, and of course a bit of kinda-romance. Recommended, but not till you’ve read the rest.

Higurashi: When They Cry Volume 13

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by En Kito. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Onisarashi-hen” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Comp Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press.

You would think, having read two of the four Eye-Opening Arc volumes last month, that Volume 13 would be the third in that sequence. But you would be wrong! Instead, Yen is publishing a complete-in-one-omnibus edition of a side story that, like Beyond Midnight, was first published as a manga rather than adapted from a game. In fact, this adaptation proved so popular with the creator that he later adapted it into a game on his own. It came out relatively early in the series, manga-wise – the first chapters were published about the same time as the first two Higurashi Arcs proper were being published by Square Enix. This one is done by another company, Kadokawa, which is far more media/franchise oriented (and given the other company is Squeenix, that’s saying a lot), and ran in their ‘otaku-oriented’ magazine Comp Ace.

The story itself takes place in a city, making a refreshing change from the small-town life of the previous books. Natsumi and her family have moved from Hinamizawa to a more urban area, and she’s settled in and made good friends. There’s even a boy she secretly likes… and he just confessed to her! What’s a cute girl to do? … oh right, this is a Higurashi book. Don’t expect shoujo hijinks here, folks. Instead, we see Natsumi worry about her grandmother, who feels they never should have moved away and worries that Oyashiro-sama will curse them.

As with the last manga-only arc, this is only tangentially related to the main action. Near the beginning, we hear news of the Great Hinamizawa disaster, and as time goes by, the survivors who had moved away before it happened start to behave very oddly. Things are not helped by the arrival of Ooishi and Akasaka, who merely want to ask Natsumi a few questions. And then their house gets covered in paper talismans, and the grandmother starts acting very strange…

There’s some similarity between this arc and the first in the series, Abducted by Demons. Natsumi’s slow descent into paranoia and mistrust is really disturbing, especially since she keeps insisting throughout that she’s doing things for her family. Unfortunately, with her first “YOU’RE LYING!”, the Higurashi catch phrase, we get a pretty good idea of what’s really going on. But then, unlike the main Higurashi manga series, the mystery is not entirely the point of this one. You’re here for psychological horror, and it delivers in spades. There’s the creepy back-of-the-neck kind of horror early on, but by midway through we’re well into ‘how do you like your blood spatters?’.

Unfortunately, there is a big flaw in the series, which is Akira, the male lead. They wanted to make him different from Keiichi (and by extension Satoshi), the males from Higurashi proper. Unfortunately, this means making him passive and hard to read. I understand that this was entirely deliberate (in fact, they lampshade it at the end), but it really didn’t work for me, and I found it hard to understand his simple obsession with loving Natsumi no matter what the cost.

The ending is tragic, but not a complete kill-em-all, and the author notes he has hopes the survivors will be able to get beyond it. Still, in the end this is a short, sharp gutpunch in the Higurashi series, showing how the events in Hinamizawa can affect even those who are far away. In fact, we’ll come back to what happens to those who move away from Hinamizawa in the Atonement Arc this fall. It’s not essential to read this if you just want the basic Higurashi story, but it’s a good, solid read, provided you don’t mind gore (and if you do, how did you get through the other 12 books?)