Oh My Goddess! Volume 37

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By Kosuke Fujishima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

Oh dear. Even for a recent volume of Oh My Goddess, a series never known for its deep and meaningful plotting, this seems like a very inconsequential volume. On the bright side, we once more have one plot carrying us through the whole volume (and into the following one, as we get a cliffhanger here). On the down side, despite the supposed ‘threat to the world’, the danger quotient just doesn’t seem that high here. So what we’re left with is a lot of running around the town, and introducing the new girl.

The new girl is named Chrono, and she is yet another goddess from heaven. However, unlike recent kickass goddesses like Peorth or Lind, Chrono is… a dojikko. What’s more, thanks to Peorth deciding to be a tease, she’s wearing a maid outfit, which is apparently the ‘traditional costume’ to wear when descending to Earth. This leads to a few jokes with Urd trying to get Chrono to say “Welcome home, Master” to Keiichi, but mostly appears to be there so that Fujishima can draw adorable clumsy maids. I think I liked it better when he spent the whole manga fetishizing motorcycles instead.

The main plot is that Chrono was supposed to be bringing a new program update to Belldandy. Except she smashed into a transformer, and dropped it. And it ended up flying all over the town in several pieces. The program is designed to keep the world ‘in tune’ essentially, and with its destruction all songs will vanish from the world… which would lead to the end of the world. So now Bell and the others but travel around looking for various aspects of the spell and capturing them, allowing Chrono, who has a beautiful singing voice, to take then into herself and recreate the update. The trouble is, as time goes by, Chrono’s voice gets more out of tune because of the busted update…

One reason people might enjoy reading this is seeing the cameos from various minor OMG characters who pop up here. Aside from Megumi and Chiharu, the rest of the large supporting cast OMG had at the start vanished once Keiichi graduated from college. So it’s nice to see that Tamiya and Otaki are as insane as ever, even when possessed to make music with their pneumatic drills. And seeing Sayoko raiding an alleyway’s garbage so that she can bang on a can – well, that’s likely the highlight of the volume.

Honestly, though, this volume didn’t grab me. It also continues the tradition of being very short, something that can’t really be complained about as the Japanese volumes are also this short. But there’s only 147 pages of manga here, and in those pages, very little actually happens. Oh My Goddess fanatics are going to buy this anyway, but casual fans might want to wait for the next time Urd’s demonic mother Hild shows up, as the story always seems to rev up once she arrives. Till then… well, have a dojikko maid goddess.

Higurashi: When They Cry Volumes 5-6

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Jiro Suzuki. Released in Japan as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Tatarigoroshi-hen” by Square Enix, serialized in the magazine GFantasy. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Bless me father, for I have sinned. It’s been over a year since my last Higurashi review. Look, sometimes things happen, OK? Especially when you KNOW bad, horrible things are going to happen and all you’re doing is waiting on tenterhooks for them to take place. In addition, this particular arc, while not the goriest, is particularly unpleasant in many ‘psychological horror’ ways. In any case, I’ve read it now, and hopefully will start catching up with the other 5 volumes I have left here. Oh yes, it goes without saying that if you don’t know the basic concept of how the Higurashi series works, you’ll be spoiled here.

So this is the ‘Satoko arc’. In the first two arcs, she was basically the bratty little kid who set annoying traps for Keiichi and did her ojou-sama laugh. It was briefly implied there was more to her than this, and this is the series where we find out what it is. She’s abused. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. For a while, she had her brother to help her, but he disappeared a year earlier, on the night of the Cotton Drifting festival. And now her uncle is back, and worse than ever. But now we have our hero! Can Keiichi help and prevent another cycle of senseless tragedy?

Nope. And here is where we realize it’s time to face facts; Keiichi is an awful, awful hero. As in the first arc, he’s driven here primarily be paranoia and fear, and by Volume 2 almost everything he does will make you want to reach through the page and strangle him. His “perfect murder” plan is laughable, especially given that he is so obvious about his guilt. What’s more, his innate distrust of his friends (who clearly are giving him an alibi, something he doesn’t understand AT ALL) leads him to make things even worse. Now, to be fair, Satoko’s uncle is a loathsome individual, even by Higurashi standards, and I shed no tears at his death. But as with the first two arcs, Keiichi seems to be defined by making the wrong decisions over and over. Which makes sense – this is based on a game, and there is no good end.

That said, if you can get past the protagonist’s idiocy, there’s a lot here to like. The mood is oppressive throughout, with the mantra of “we’re powerless” coming up over and over. As I noted above, the gore here is subtler, though it does appear when it needs to (Rika’s corpse is as horrible as ever). The most depressing moment of the manga is not the ending, with its huge pile of body bags, or Keiichi’s murders, or even Rika at the shrine. It’s Keiichi patting Satoko on the head, and having him hit what is clearly a hidden wound – something which sets her off into a shrieking frenzy as the strain gets to be too much for her. There’s also odd hints and suggestions that work better in hindsight, after playing/reading the other arcs. The poem at the end is written by a character from the sequel series Umineko. And a phone conversation with Mion Keiichi has, and her subsequent freak out, makes me wonder if another ‘twin switch’ was going on at the time.

Overall, while there are no ‘good endings’ in most of the Higurashi series, this is one of the worst. Luckily, we’re done with Keiichi as the hero. Next time, we get what appears to be a side story taking place a few years earlier, with a young police officer running into a little shrine maiden girl. However, I’m sure nothing will be as it seems. In the meantime, if you like over the top psychological horror and don’t mind the occasional lolicon character designs, Higurashi will deliver for you.

Manga the week of 3/2

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When February has 28 days, shipping dates often go all weird. And this is not an exception. Midtown’s list notes no Tokyopop books, showing they’re MIA for another week. However, it *does* have the blitz from Viz, showing that Viz does know that it’s March already.

Moreover, in addition to Midtown’s early list, I’m now starting to rely on my own awesome comic shops’ list, now that they have Facebook. They tell me I have a title from Seven Seas coming on the 2nd. Since I’ve no interest in the 2nd Inukami omnibus (another harem manga based on a light novel series), I will assume that it is the first volume of Toradora!, which I *am* getting despite the fact that it is… another harem manga based on a light novel series. DON’T YOU DARE JUDGE ME!

*cough* Anyway… the rest of the field is devoted to Viz Media. On the shonen side, there are new volumes devoted to Bleach, which I note only as it has the climax of the Mayuri/Syazel fight, and two more loathsome characters it’s difficult to find. It’s really great, despite Kubo’s usual pacing issues. There’s Hoshin Engi, and Hunter x Hunter (is it caught up with the hiatus yet?), as well as Yu-Gi-Oh GX and Ultimate Muscle for those fans who like the goofy game-esque fun that V-Jump gives you. Oh yes, and Stan Lee’s Ultimo. My pick, however, is the 4th volume of Toriko, which will continue to be about the manliest food ever.

On the shoujo/josei side, there’s plenty of awesome stuff. The debut this month is Oresama Teacher, another great Hana to Yume title, this one about a delinquent girl headed to a new school to try to stay on the straight and narrow, but will find that things aren’t always as easy as it seems. I loved the author’s last series (which I will avoid mentioning for decorum’s sake), so this should be a big one for me. We also have new Kamisama Kiss, and on the LaLa side we have Library Wars 4 (which I still enjoy) and La Corda D’oro (which comes out every once in a blue moon, so grab it). And for the josei fan in you, there’s more Butterflies, Flowers, which I’m sure will continue to be as funny and squirmy as ever.

All this and more can be yours!