Manga the week of 4/20

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First off, my obligatory Tokyopop/Diamond rant. Most of this months’ titles shipped on time. 2 were on Diamond’s list this week, but my store (and Midtown) did not get them: Gakuen Alice 16 and V.B. Rose 12. Two are simply M.I.A.: The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko 2 and the Hetalia Axis Powers Postcard book. I suspect the last of those is genuinely delayed, as Amazon also doesn’t have it. But Amazon has had the others for 2 weeks now, so it’s a repeat of last month. And they aren’t coming next week either. I’m behind on Gakuen Alice anyway, but I’m Amazoning the other two, which means when Diamond gets off its arse and ships them via the direct market, I may do a contest giveaway.

Rant over, so what’s out next week? Quite a lot, actually. Breaking it down:

Bandai has a 3rd volume of Code Geass: Knight, the doujinshi anthology book marketed for young women with an emphasis on yaoi tease.

Digital Manga Publishing has a slew of things, including three shoujo titles from Mag Garden’s Comic Blade Avarus. The Beautiful Skies of Houou High in particular has a solicit that I suspect makes it sound more yuri than it is. There’s also a new Itakura Na Kiss, which surely must be getting near the point where the couple actually get together. Surely. Any volume now. On the yaoi front, there’s the 2nd volume of the late 1990s ‘Treasure’, and the second omnibus of Yellow 2, making it Yellow 2 2. Does that make sense?

Our long national nightmare is almost over, as Kodansha Comics releases the last of its fake new releases, the 6th volume of Akira. Like the previous 5, this is a straight up reprint of the old Dark Horse release. Next month will see the company actually release things that are NEW.

Finally appearing a mere 14 months after its solicitation in Previews is the 4th volume of Udon’s reprint of Silent Mobius, as they do their best Dark Horse imitation. Luckily, Udon’s reissue has been top notch, so us fans of the series should get a nice treat.

Viz has two new Ikki volumes, House of Five Leaves 3 for you Ono fans of not-really-yaoi-but-close-enough, and Kingyo Used Books for you really-you-read-this-for-the-characters? fans. There’s also March Story, with its Korean creator but Japanese magazine release, as it’s in Sunday Gene-X. And there’s a new 20th Century Boys, which is still chugging along.

And lastly, Yen Press has a new Black Butler, for those who were bored with seeing 1-4 in the NYT list and wanted a new volume to keep it company. New volumes of High School of the Dead and Omamori Himari remind us that even Yen Press is not above catering to the ‘harems and boobies’ school of manga, as typified by Dragon Age, the magazine they both run in. There’s a new twist in this month’s Higurashi: it’s the 2nd volume of an arc, but it’s not the end! The Eye-Opening Arc has not even begun to screw with your head yet, and is only at its halfway point here. Pandora Hearts not only runs in the same magazine as Black Butler, but also sells very well, possibly to the exact same demographic. Lastly, it’s the end of an era, as one of Yen’s first licenses, Spiral: Bonds of Reasoning, comes to the end with Volume 15. Congratulations to Yen on completing this shonen mystery series!

What interests you this week? It’s OK, you can admit it’s Omamori Himari, I won’t get mad. Much.

Clean-Freak Fully Equipped Volume 1

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By Touya Tobina. Released in Japan as “Keppeki Shounen Kanzen Soubi” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

In reading this short shoujo series, I noticed immediately a fair number of similarities to the also recently licensed Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko. Both start off with what is clearly meant to be a one-chapter story that wraps everything up, only to have to dial it back and send certain characters away in order to continue the basic premise when asked to make it a longer series. And both series have the love interest stick around, be it by gratuitous stalking (in Kanoko’s case), or by constant letter writing (in Clean-Freak’s case). And they’re both the same sort of fun, light-hearted and not entirely realistic shoujo comedy that we’ve come to expect from the folks at CMX… sorry, at Tokyopop. (I do wonder if the recently-departed Asako was responsible for licensing these two series, as they really do seem like CMX bait.)

That said, the protagonists in the two series differ quite a bit. Senda, the lead male and title character,l is a hypochondriac and has a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder, owing to a trauma he had when he was a boy. (To be honest, the trauma doesn’t seem too traumatic, but hey, whatever sets up your plot.) The humor of the volume lies in his over the top ways of protecting himself from anything that could possibly infect or interact with him, ranging from going on field trips wearing hazmat suits to a giant square “bubble boy” type environment that he walks around the school in. How much you enjoy this depends on how much you can suspend your disbelief – much of this borders on the ludicrous – but I found it fun after I was able to get into the author’s groove.

The supporting cast fall into the ‘introduce one new character every chapter’ cliche that typifies much of this genre. In the opening ‘one-shot’, we meet the super-cute Aiuchi, who is popular and outgoing and seems to like Senda and see beyond his off-putting exterior. In return, she really brings out the best in him, and helps us to realize that beyond his obsessed exterior is a nice guy with a strong moral code. They bond after he discovers she has motion sickness, and defends her from some boys “grossed out” by her throwing up on the bus, but then the author shunts her off to New York so that Senda can stop loosening up and we can have an actual plot. She’s still very much present throughout, though, both via letters (the pictures of her with various animals is hysterical – I presume she must visit the Bronx Zoo every day) and Senda’s thoughts (when asked to consider why he likes Auichi rather than, say, the girl throwing herself at him).

As for the others, Anzai is there to be Senda’s opposite, and is fun, even if his over the top antics can grate a bit. The backstory with his mother was quite serious, and I appreciate the fact that it wasn’t resolved neatly. Yumeno is the aforementioned girl from the previous paragraph, who also sees beyond Senda’s exterior to the real person within, but is more pushy about it, and has the basic problem of showing up after he’s started crushing on Aiuchi. Sotsugu probably gets the least development here, being an animal lover, but maybe he’ll have more to do in the next volume. All three of them serve the same basic purpose, which is giving Senda a reason to start interacting more with the world and stop living in his own sterile environment.

There’s a one-shot at the end, the author’s debut which ran in The Hana to Yume a year earlier, but it’s really pretty bad. It does serve to show that her art has improved, at least, though it’s not terrific. But the series is fun, and at only two volumes it’s not that much of a time sink. No doubt Volume 2 will see Auichi’s return from New York, and hopefully will wrap things up with a nice sweet bow while leaving the main reason to get this title, which is watching Senda’s amusingly over the top freakiness.

Skyblue Shore Volume 2

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By Nanpei Yamada. Released in Japan as “Sorairo Kaigan” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Hana to Yume (“Betsuhana”). Released in North America by Tokyopop.

As I was reading this volume of Skyblue Shore, it began to dawn on my that its heroine was a rare breed, especially in Hakusensha shoujo: she’s a nice person who can make friends with anyone but doesn’t seen either flighty or dense. Tomo seems to live very much in the real world, and as such doesn’t require more down to earth friends (her best friend Anri seems to fulfill the flakey stereotype here). She’s still a teenager, of course, so we aren’t talking mature beyond her years, but it is nice to see.

The fact that she is so outgoing also balances nicely against Tento, who can be very frustrating. It is nice to see a sullen male shoujo lead who isn’t mooning over the heroine right from the start – in fact, romance is sort of only one mild subplot in this, with Tomo still being very hung up on the older brother Riku, and indeed getting into a love triangle. The relationship she was with Tento is that of a good friend and mentor, and it’s a delight to see, especially when it focuses on the beachcombing and making of accessories. Tento worries about Tomo, who is the outgoing heart-on-her-sleeve sort that makes people worry. Unfortunately, Tento is still quite repressed and brooding, and still has issues with his past (the flashback we see here goes a long way to explaining why).

So we have Tomo, who’s extremely nice. We have Tento, who’s sort of moody but not precisely rude to anyone. We have Riku, Tento’s brother, who’s a barrel of laughs even though it’s implied part of that might be a facade. Isn’t there anyone who can break up the monotony of a group of good people growing up and learning about life on the seashore? Oh, hi Michiru! She is a total breath of fresh air in this series, as she’s so angry, rude, and generally appalling. Of course, this means little to Tomo, who has made it her goal to get Michiru to open up and become friends with her. But it’s clearly a long-term goal. In a series filled with peaceful coming-of-age characters, Michiru is a sour apple that makes the whole thing more flavorful. I want more of her, and hope that she opens up while still being blunt and rude.

As this volume wraps up, we get the sense that it may focus more of the making of beach artifacts and sales thereof – the flamboyant guy who managed to piss off everyone in his one appearance seems to speak of that, as he has the right air of ‘rival artist’ to him. And I hope to see more of Tomo and Tento getting closer, though the series has not yet quite placed its foot in the romance pool yet. This is still a coming of age drama (with funny bits), and quite an interesting read. If you can get used to the mouths.