Portrait of M & N Volume 4

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By Tachibana Higuchi. Released in Japan as “M to N no Shouzou” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Honestly, this manga continues to drive me crazy. Despite all attempts at comedy (and there are some here, though not as many as Volume 3), this continues to be a series about watching a fragile, shy young girl get horribly abused by life. At least with Gakuen Alice Mikan was allowed to be spunky and upbeat. Whereas Mitsuru, a girl who glows with happiness whenever someone remotely notices her, spends much of the volume in despair about her horrible family, her somewhat callous boyfriend, and her innate masochism.

One thing I liked is that the misunderstandings from Volume 3, with her new friend Ririko thinking that she was dating Hijiri, are very quickly cleared up, allowing the two of them to stay good friends. It’s always nice when an author knows which jokes to drag out and which ones can be safely stopped short. (There was also an amusing bit where the two girls hug after making up, and two passing guys go “Ah, lesbians!” “What, where? Lesbians?” It reminded me of some of the yuri fanboys I see online.)

The trip to the beach also began on a very amusing note, with Natsuhiko and company dressing up in drag and essentially kidnapping Mitsuru to get her on their vacation. (I did feel sad at one point; the Nibley twins and Jamie Rich translated one bubble as ‘Big Success!’ rather than ‘Huge Success’, missing out on a great Portal reference.) The vacation itself works less well, with a horribly shoehorned in island shipwreck designed to do nothing more than get Natsuhiko jealous; and his subsequent jealousy, which is understandable given his lack of experience with love, but his taking it out on Mitsuru is like stomping on baby ducks. Luckily, he knows this and resolves it fairly quickly. Unluckily, he resolves it by accident by getting drunk, kissing her, and sleeping on her breasts all night.

And so, after the summer vacation of awkward, we reach the culture festival of even more awkward. This is, if anything, even more uncomfortable as we’re dealing with Mitsuru’s wretchedly horrible family. The class is doing a cosplay cafe, with Mitsuru dressing up as The Crane Wife (from that story where the man helps an injured crane and she takes human form and marries him). This involves her wearing a very skimpy costume with a crane ‘hat’, something that even the most-self-possessed woman would have trouble carrying off. And once her brother and her ‘intended fiancee’ (something she only vaguely knew about before this, and is rather horrified to hear about) show up, things quickly descend into a giant chase.

It all ends up with a confrontation (at long last, I should add), with Mitsuru’s mother slapping her across the chops for being such an ungrateful daughter. Which, naturally, gets Mitsuru to ask her to do it again harder. You can imagine how well this goes. Luckily, Natsuhiko is there to drag her off, and the volume ends with the two of them running away from her marriage interview, fiancee, and family… except now they’ve no idea what to do next.

The author comments that M&N; was scheduled to be 2 volumes, but the author was asked to extend it, and she didn’t have any other material. I think what we see here does extend naturally from the plot, but the execution… Gakuen Alice, the work she did after this, has a much better blend of comedy and gripping drama, and manages to make Mikan incredibly sympathetic without making her a doormat. Mitsuru… you want to hug her, but at the same time reading about her life is like sticking your hands in boiling tar. I want to find out how things work out for these two. Sadly, that involves reading the manga to do it.

The Stellar Six of Gingacho Volume 2

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By Yuuki Fujimoto. Released in Japan as “Kirameki☆Gingachou Shoutengai” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

As we get into the 2nd volume of Stellar Six, the title has just transitioned from the 6-times-per-year short-series magazine The Hana to Yume to the 24-times-a-year long haul Hana to Yume. As a result, you can, as with many Volume 2s, feel the gears grinding a bit as the author starts to plan things out for a longer run. A lot of Volume 2 is hitting the plot points Vol. 1 hit for the larger readership that HtY has: friendship is forever, and Mike and Kuro are going to be a couple once the denseness ends.

The manga is very big about stressing the impermanence of all things, and Mike’s struggles to rage against this are almost getting a bit much. I appreciate the nostalgia factor that the author is using, and indeed we root for Mike to be able to reunite her gang of 6 in 20 years when they’ll all still be BEST BUDS, but you can also see that this is causing her to wear blinders a bit. She’s the perky innocent young girl (now 15 years old instead of the 13 of Volume 1), but it almost seems to bit TOO much. I’m sure this will end with Mike getting her wish, but I hope that some of the pains of becoming an adult hit her here as well.

As for Mike and Kuro, the relationship between them provides much of the humor in the volume. It is obvious to everyone except Mike that Kuro is in love with her. Mike clearly is in love with him as well, but has no idea what that kind of love means, and when she tries to think about it too hard she just sort of freezes up. Meanwhile, Kuro is better at knowing his own feelings, but still hasn’t quite gotten what Mike’s ‘electric shocks to her chest’ are, so he’s still thinking that the love is all on his end. It’s the stuff shoujo manga is made of, and can get frustrating if dragged on too long. Luckily, this is only 10 volumes long, so they should be OK. There’s also a healthy jolt of lampshading from the four friends, especially Iba-chan and Q, who make the best ‘you are angering us with your dumb’ expressions.

As for the other four, they’re still pretty underdeveloped. The author notes in her end of the volume chatter that she hopes to give them more of a focus in the upcoming volumes, which will be good. They’re nice and all, but I want to know more about them than their basic obvious personality. So far, Mamoru is my favorite, with a sense of humor that appeals to be greatly. “I am Uromam.”

There is a short story at the end of this, one of the author’s debut pieces (she says it’s her first, but she sold two others before this one, which will be seen in the final volume of Stellar Six). It lacks the flair and polish of the main work, as is typical with these fill out the 2nd volume with one-shots chapters. There is a bit of a science-fiction edge to it, but you get the sense that this was just added to make the work have something to say beyond the standard ‘I am moving away, and we will never see each other again, but we will always be bestest friends 4-evah’. It doesn’t help that the last chapter of Stellar Six we get here deals with leaving your old friends also, and is far smoother.

So, not quite as fun as Volume 1, but still a great deal of fun. I expect we’ll be seeing some long-term stuff playing out now that the author is working with a mid-sized series rather than a series of one-shots, and look forward to seeing more of the other 4 of the Stellar Six, even though I know that the stars will continue to be Mike and Kuro and their sweet, clueless love.

Dorohedoro Volume 3

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By Q Hayashida. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

As always with this series, there’s so much going on here that I don’t even know where to begin. We continue to have Caiman and Nikaido attempt to discover how he got his lizard head, and this time they even go to the world of sorcerers to do it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, En and company are trying to get information from what was supposedly ‘Caiman’s’ severed head, who turns out (once reattached to a body) to be a guy named Risu. Sadly, Risu seems to be a bit of a flake, so they aren’t really getting a lot out of him. Even worse, Nikaido shows up to kidnap him.

The overall plot *is* fascinating, and we do get a couple more major characters fleshed out here with Risu and Dr. Kasukabe, but as always it seems that I read this series for the character moments and the art. The art in particular is deceptively chaotic, but looking closely brings fresh joy with each page. Just the backgrounds, with its rough-hewn, sketchy look, gives the impression of a world that’s just as sketchy. And while I’m on the subject, there’s some fanservice here, but it’s interesting the way it’s handled. Both Nikaido and Noi are very busty, and we can clearly see that when they change (or, in Nikaido’s case, when a giant mushroom pops out of her back and destroys her shirt). But for the most part, she and Noi don’t dress in skintight outfits, but in sensible sturdy clothing. Which makes complete sense in the content of both this world and their characters. It’s nice to see.

Shin and Noi continue to be my favorites, I will admit. Their casual back and forths are almost always amusing (though I will admit that I found the ‘bully sandwich’ incident to be a tad over the top – and even more unrealistic than usual), and the strong bond they share is actually rather sweet. Likewise, Caiman and Nikaido may be more awkward with each other – particularly when a certain intimacy is required – but are also great to watch, and you’re rooting for them more than Shin and Noi, as they both have better clearly defined goals. Pages 152-153 are not helping the shipper in me at all, I will admit.

And then there’s the humor. Man, this book is funny. I will admit that it requires a certain love of gore to really get into it – which applies to the entire series, of course – but there’s always something here. Caiman’s fear of ghosts, the ‘fire toilet to Hell’ (what kind of mind does Hayashida have to not only think of such a thing, but make it a throwaway gag?), Shin’s response to Noi after noticing her quick recovery from a bullet to the head, and my favorite part, which is Noi’s response when she finds that En is out of control and turning Shin, Ebisu, and Fujita into mushrooms. Noi is the sort who, when presented with a bigger problem, just finds a bigger hammer. And speaking of Ebisu and Fujita, they continue to be the source of many ‘it’s fun watching them suffer’ gags, but they also get the sweetest moment in the whole book, right at the end.

Generally speaking I am not a fan of the grotesque, and this book certainly has a lot of gruesome moments, with the violence sliding into ‘highly unlikely’ much of the time. But combining the gruesome with fun characters and an intriguing mystery have helped to make this fascinating. The series is 16 volumes and still running in Japan, so clearly the author is content to take her own time in telling us this story. But there’s so much to look at and take in here, I don’t mind at all.