Happy Cafe Volume 7

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By Kou Matsuzuki. Released in Japan as “Shiawase Kissa Sanchoume” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Reading this volume of Happy Cafe reminded me in many ways of my experiences reading The Magic Touch. They’re both manga that are, at best, merely ‘okay’. However, no one is decrying Happy Cafe as one of the worst titles ever released in North America the way they did with The Magic Touch. So I feel far less of a need to defend it and point out its strengths. Which is a bit of a problem for perfectly adequate volumes like this, where my favorite part was the one-shot at the end written 3 years before the chapters we find here. Yes, once again I latch onto a minor supporting couple at the expense of the leads.

The chapter is quite good, and I like how she tied it into the main narrative. We aren’t quite at Banri Hidaka levels of ‘all my stories are connected’, but it shows a certain amount of thought going into her plots that she can use the characters in ‘Number One Deluxe’ here and possibly develop their relationship beyond what we got in the one-shot. Also, the comic stars a tall grumpy girl. Another favorite type of mine in manga. Unfortunately, the other minor couple that we met in Volume 6 gets resolved perfunctorily in barely a page or two, showing the pacing problems that have dogged this series since it began.

Meanwhile, we have our leads. Natsuki Takaya, in discussing Fruits Basket, once said she had written outlines for a 2-volume, 6-volume, and more than 13-volume series, depending on how popular it was and when it would get cancelled by Hakusensha. Happy Cafe has reached Volume 7, and I think we’ve hit that point for Matsuzuki as well, as the relationship between Uru and Shindo, which seemed to be near actual resolution in the previous volume, gets scaled back quite a bit here. We have love rivals who confess, unaware our girl is asleep. We have love rivals who are simply doing their best to mess things up and get Uru and Shindo thinking in the wrong direction. And we have people trying to get them together, and being far less of a help than they think they are.

In the middle of this, it’s a shame that Uru and Shindo aren’t as interesting as they got last volume. Shindo is having difficulty dealing with abandonment issues and his mother, so I can at least see why he’s at a low ebb. Uru, though, for some reason isn’t as fun as she’s been in the past. Matsuzuki works best when she’s trying to be funny, not being quite as good as drama, and seeing Uru without her amusing quirks and gags makes me think something is missing. (I will admit there was one great bit, where she and Sou are locked in a room at the school and she admits she can’t force open the door – not because it’s too much for her, but because the school said she would be punished if she smashed any more school property with her insane strength.)

There’s nothing really wrong with this volume, despite all my complaining above. If a shoujo fan reads it, they will enjoy it. But it’s not going to make them check Amazon desperately to see when the next volume is out the way, say, Kimi ni Todoke does. And honestly, there’s another similarity between this series and The Magic Touch: both artists have gone on to do a new series that is proving better and more popular than the first in Japan; Tsubaki with Oresama Teacher, and Matsuzuki with The Prince, the Witch, and the Princesses. Manga series in Japan are not only for popularity, but also as a breeding ground for greater things. And we’re seeing an earlier example of an artist honing their craft and learning as they go.

Maid-sama! Volume 8

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By Hiro Fujiwara. Released in Japan as “Kaichō wa Maid-sama!” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Yeah, I should have realized they’d dial it back a bit. After the big love-love revelations in Volume 7, it was somewhat inevitable that we would not have the relationship progress even further, mostly as this is an ongoing shoujo manga and you have to save some ammunition for future plot twists. As a result, most of this volume deals with Misaki unable to deal with Usui’s feelings for her, and blushing like a red light.

We do get some further development of Hinata, Misaki’s childhood friend who’s returned in high school looking slim and cute. He’s pretty much doomed to not win, and has become even more aware of it in this volume thanks to Usui. (Usui is refreshingly blunt about his relationship with Misaki whenever she isn’t around or isn’t listening, and clearly regards Hinata as a threat to be eliminated as soon as possible. It’s hard not to feel bad for Hinata, who’s a great guy who simply suffers from not being Usui. He even notes his friends warned him before he moved that she may have fallen for someone else in his absence. Of course, he’ll keep doggedly trying.

We also meet Misaki’s mother and sister in this volume. Her mother is pretty much what I expected, basically looking completely exhausted (remember Misaki is working at the maid cafe to earn money to help her family after their dad ran out on them), but her sister Suzuna is an immediate scene stealer, given multiple quirks that I’m drawn to (emotionless girl, snarker, seems to have astonishingly good luck), and in the anime, she was actually introduced into earlier scenes which the manga didn’t have. Speaking of the anime, it was announced at about the time this volume went to press, and we see the various characters getting excited about it.

The second half of the volume deals with the upcoming midterm elections. Misaki is running again, and is trying to get Yukimura to get more fired up about it. Several of the boys are not happy, as they’re tired of being told what to do by Misaki, and decide to find a candidate of their own to run against her. Their choice is a very odd one, as it’s Kanou, the repressed hypnotist guy who went after Misaki 3-4 volumes ago. Kanou clearly wants nothing to do with this at all, but is unable to say no as he’s quickly swooped up and promoted by the other guys. Best part of this chapter was Misaki noting that, even with all the things she’s accomplished as President, it won’t be worth much if no one cares after she leaves. She really is quite a responsible young woman!

There’s two more side-stories here, both of which ran in the spinoff magazine LaLa Special. The first doesn’t quite work for me, being very unfocused. It’s about the three idiots again, and how one of them used to be the big badass delinquent at his old middle school. So when his old underclassmen go looking for him and find a doofy Misaki-loving goofball… they’re upset. And so they kidnap Yukimura, who is dressed in drag for no reason whatsoever, and our heroes have to dress up as delinquents to save him. Intended, I expect, as pure fanservice, the only reason anyone would want to read this is seeing Misaki look like she stepped off the pages of Hana to Asuka-gumi. The other side-story here is Misaki overthinking whether she should make Usui a lunch, and is sweet but slight.

After the big romance of Volume 7, much of this volume does feel like a bit of a letdown. Nevertheless, reading about Misaki is still fun (though try not to take a shot every time she blushes, drinking game fans) and I look forward to seeing the outcome of the student elections in Volume 9.

Skip Beat! Volume 23

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By Yoshiki Nakamura. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

So I’ve been going on for some time about this volume of Skip Beat!, and how I would be interested to see the reaction of the readers who had not been following it in Japanese. And, as it turns out, the reaction has generally been ‘it’s another volume of Skip Beat”. Now I’m trying to look back and see *why* I had expectations of this volume being controversial, and why that didn’t pan out.

First of all, it’s not serialized. When Chapter 135 came out in Japanese, there was a 2-week wait before the next one. On the forums and fan message boards, therefore, there was a lot of speculation about what would be happening, and the majority of folks felt that Kyoko and Chiaki had “gone too far” and would somehow be punished for it. Obviously, this did not happen – the opposite, in fact. But here in mid-volume, we see the consequences immediately, so there isn’t that sense of dread that you get when waiting for the next chapter, nor are we making up resolutions in our head.

Secondly, on a more personal note, I’m not a big fan of method acting. This is purely down to my own biases, of course, but I do have a drama degree, so I have dealt with it in my lifetime quite a bit. In general my opinion is similar to Laurence Olivier’s in the apocryphal story of him telling Dustin Hoffman, who had been up for 5 nights and looked horrible in an attempt at realism, to “try acting”. Much of this volume of Skip Beat! is about immersing yourself in a role, and trying to live the life of your character, something which Kyoko (and later Chiaki) prove that they excel at. But damn, they’re torturing an actress! And yes, it is torture, going beyond bullying with the nail polish remover and lighter. We do see a bit of fallout, as the actress’s manager reams the director out for not stopping it, but it gets defused when the actress in question wants to be as ‘in the role’ as Kyoko and Chiaki, and agrees to reproduce it in the take. That said, I feel something more should have been made of it, and it wasn’t. Things got too dangerous.

Aside from that, this volume of Skip Beat was fantastic. I may have been uncomfortable with Natsu and Yumika in 135, but I suspect that was very deliberate, and the setup was beautiful. I particularly loved the reaction of the actress playing Kaori, who ended up feeling relieved and touched that Natsu did not consider her something to be “thrown away”. Even though it was undercut immediately afterwards, the feelings were drawn beautifully. As for Chiaki, her arc essentially ends here, as she’s able to put her past behind her and attempt to love acting once more. Not that it will be easy – she has no idea what she’s in for in the “Love Me” section.

We also start up a Valentine’s Day arc, which also seems to be around the same time as Ren’s birthday… and leads to a nice cliffhanger, as Kyoko has forgotten it, and hasn’t gotten him anything. To make matters worse, Reino has shown up again, and wants Kyoko to give him chocolates for Valentine’s. This is possibly the funniest scene in the volume, as Reino tries everything he can to show Kyoko he’s fallen for her (in his own jerkass way, of course), but gets nowhere as Kyoko’s “love circuits” are still broken. Though it’s also hard to top Lory’s entrance as well – any time Lory shows up is a potential funny highlight in itself.

So Kyoko now has a handle on Natsu, has the support of the entire crew, and has finally worked things out with Chiaki. Good thing, too, as it looks like this next arc, which appears to focus on Ren’s birthday and Valentine’s Day, won’t be very easy on her. Despite my misgivings about the ‘method acting’ bullying scene, this is still highly recommended.