V.B. Rose Volume 11

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By Banri Hidaka. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

It’s something of a surprise that we’re 11 volumes in before we finally get a good, long look at what drives Mitsuya Kuromine. He is, after all, one of the main protagonists, introduced in Chapter 1. But for all that, we really knew very little about him beyond the fight with his brother we saw in the earliest volumes. So even though it means yet another flashback in a series that seems fairly drenched in them, I was pleased to be able to finally get a handle on Mitsuya’s machinations.

Well, mostly. Mitsuya is still fairly difficult to understand, though certainly we see in the flashback that he is a young man who is simply moving through life with no direction. This, of course, is what leads him to bond with Yukari so strongly, which in turn leads him to the pattern-making that becomes his purpose. However, the flashback is really to introduce us to how Mitsuya met Yukari, and how they began to define their peculiar friendship. It’s played up deliberately like a BL comic, something noted several times by Ageha, with Yukari in the uke role. (It is rather startling to see Yukari so short in high school – most shoujo heroes tend towards the tall, and clearly he later shot up to at least be taller than Ageha.)

Oddly, Mitsuya’s flashback begins AFTER the traumatic event that defined his ‘uncaring’ attitude, so we need another mini-flashback from Tsuyu to go over those details. It doesn’t really tell us anything we couldn’t have guessed – Tsuyu had a horrible upbringing leaving her with a sense of zero self-worth, and this led her to reject Mitsuya, which affected them both far more than they expected. How they deal with it is also reflected in their personalities – Mitsuya has continued to tease Tsuyu like the 12-year-old he was when this all happened, whereas Tsuyu runs away from him in denial and self-hatred.

This leads to the climax of this volume, where it’s revealed that Tsuyu is going to be running away for good, and has allowed her family to set up an omiai for her. Given that she’s getting near 25, this is not particularly surprising – Japan may not have as many arranged marriages as it once did, but it still has them quite a bit. This also does lead to Ahega acting like a hothead and belting Mitsuya – after mellowing out once she and Yukari got together, it was nice to see her quick temper returning. Less nice was the cliffhanger collapse by Mitsuya, who is fighting a cold – cliffhanger chapter endings are not really one of Banri Hidaka’s strengths, and this one in particular seemed very forced.

Still, we should finally be beyond all the flashbacks, and I expect the next three volumes will be taken up by tying up all the plotlines in a neat bow. Starting, no doubt, with Mitsuya and Tsuru, which I’m fairly sure will take up the majority of Volume 12.

The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko Volume 1

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By Ririko Tsujita. Released in Japan as “Warau Kanoko-sama” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine LaLa DX. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

I have to admit, this title took me totally off guard. I knew next to nothing about it going in, except that it was 3 volumes long and cute shoujo. Imagine my surprise, then, when it turned out to be one of the best things I’d read in months, with a delightful heroine, some great humor, character development that doesn’t hit you over the head with its obviousness, and best of all, a fantastic use of its somewhat prearranged format.

For those unaware, LaLa DX is the sister magazine of LaLa, which comes out 6 times a year, half the amount that regular LaLa does. (Likewise, Hana to Yume has its own similar sister publication, The Hana to Yume, which serves a similar purpose.) Generally it has one-shots or short series, usually by folks who are newer to manga than the regulars in the big publications. Sometimes a title will surprise everyone by really taking off, and will move to the big magazine (Natsume’s Book of Friends and Special A are good examples of this.) And often a title commissioned as a one-shot will get a lot of fans, and it will lead to a series. That’s what happened here, with the first chapter of Kanoko’s adventures clearly being a one-shot. The magazine comes out 6 times a year, and can’t be relied on to have readers as dedicated as those of the main publications, so usually the first 3-4 pages of every chapter are a recap, introducing everyone all over again and laying out the premise. It can get aggravating when put into a collection, but works very well for serials.

Lady Kanoko, however, takes advantage of this need to re-introduce everyone by having her change schools every single chapter! At first this seems very bizarre, and I’m not quite sure what her parents must do to allow her to do this (it’s not even clear that it’s deliberate), but it serves the plot quite well. Kanoko’s machinations depend on the class she’s in not being all that familiar with her. Once she reveals herself, it would become much harder to meddle – excuse me, observe – without either compromising herself or getting found out. Plus, this saves us the problem of ‘every classmate has a crisis’ repetition – each new school brings one big issue, which Kanoko ‘solves’ and then moves on.

This could still get very dull – witness Genkaku Picasso recently, where the revelations turned out to be quite ordinary – but we also have a smart and fun heroine in Kanoko, the title character. She’s clever, she’s observant (well, mostly – see below), she cuts through all the social niceties to speak her mind. As the lead guy in the series observes, she’s STRONG, and is honestly baffled about why other girls aren’t the same as her. She’s also got some fantastic facial expressions, particularly her nasty grins when she’s taking things down in her notebook. Though my favorite of her smiles is the one where the author simply draws a straight smiley-face line – :) – usually right at her moments of triumph. (The first chapter ends rather jarringly with her crying in the bathroom after realizing that she actually does have friends who care about her, but this is fairly easily written off as being the one-shot ending – the final chapter’s blushing denials are far more in character.)

Best of all, like many impartial observers (which she isn’t – the book shows us over and over again how much she meddles in everyone’s lives, to the point where “objective observer” becomes the running gag of the series), Kanoko is completely unaware of her own foibles and problems, as well as how she appears to others. Tsubaki, the lead guy I mentioned before, shows up chapter after chapter at her new school, which it is hinted is sometimes several HOURS away by train – and every time she’s surprised, and moreover accepts his explanations/excuses. It’s certainly clear to *us* that he’s totally smitten with her – and also finds her fascinating, in the same way that she’s enjoying observing all the students around her. He watches the watcher. I’ve talked before about the clueless dense heroines who don’t get that the guy is totally in love with them, but this one doesn’t seem to be solely for the reason that if they realized their love the series would end. Kanoko simply isn’t to the point yet where she can accept or even understand such feelings in her life.

Her meddling also doesn’t always work, and is another good way of making her sympathetic. It’s all very well and good telling off girls who you only met last week, but in the final chapter when Kanoko returns to her first school for a festival she was invited to, we see that she has indeed been affected by her friends – and that this is a good thing. Towards the end, she tries to manipulate her friend Momoka into getting out of a school competition that she knows will be sabotaged, but when she tries emotional manipulation on her it just leaves Momoka sad, and gives Kanoko a sour taste. Seeing Kanoko at the very end attending the competition and cheering Momoka up was quite heartwarming.

Honestly, this is one of those volumes that, having finished it, I immediately went back and read it all over again. I know it won’t be for everyone – despite all my raving about it, it *can* get repetitious – but I personally found this to be a total home run pick-up for Tokyopop. Buy it, so it can sell well! It has a sequel currently running in LaLa DX, chronicling Kanoko’s years in high school, and would be an ideal license after this finishes.

Also, Kanoko in the Marchen Doll costume is utterly freaking adorable.

Hetalia Axis Powers Volume 2

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By Hidekaz Himaruya. Released in Japan by Gentosha, originally serialized as an online webcomic. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Since my review of Hetalia Axis Powers Volume 1, I have gotten quite a bit immersed in the world that is Hetalia. I now have the 2 DVDs that Funimation released of the anime. I’m also au courant with Hidekaz’s blog entries, and have developed quite a taste for Austria/Hungary fan fiction. I worried as I started to read the 2nd published volume of Hetalia from Tokyopop that I would have lost my objectivity, that I would completely fail to explain to the casual reader who knew nothing of Hetalia why they should pick this up.

Then I came to my senses and shook my head. WHAT casual readers? Seriously, anyone who would grab the 2nd manga of Hetalia Axis Powers is not going to be a neophyte. They’re going to be someone who wants to read the bit with Switzerland and Liechtenstein, as the printed volume diverges from the original (he doesn’t have a grumpy lunch with Austria here), someone who wants to squee about Italy crawling into Germany’s bed naked at random times, someone who doesn’t particularly care that Taiwan is introduced in the huge epic cast biographies at the start but doesn’t actually appear in the book. It is, in short, for the fan. The fan who has already read this entire book online already, but will buy it all over again anyway.

So what *do* we get here? Well, we get Hidekaz writing randomly about whatever the heck he wants. Despite the cliffhanger of Volume 1, almost none of this volume deals with the time period of World War II itself. Most of it seems to take place in modern times (indeed, the Russia chapters depend on this), and are anecdotes that go on for about 5-6 pages, then move to a different set of countries and a different set of jokes. And as this is a 4-koma, I sometimes use the word “jokes” in air quotes, as they are more mildly amusing than anything else.

But the time period is irrelevant, as is the plot. We’re being immersed in a world here, so it doesn’t really matter that Austria and Hungary, so prevalent last chapter, disappear here, as we get a pile of new countries to meet. How much you like these largely depends on how much you like the ethnic exaggeration of that particular country. I found the Canada chapters dragged, mostly as I think ‘invisible, nice, and constantly being compared with America’, while accurate, does not really lend itself well to fun situations. On the other hand, I loved seeing Switzerland and Liechtenstein’s interaction, as their adorableness is contrasted very well with Liechtenstein’s near-tragic past. And while Ukraine can be annoying (I had hoped her breast’s sound effects would be an anime-only thing, but there they are, boinging every panel), Belarus is fantastically insane, tearing apart Russia’s door and insisting that they MARRY NOW. It bears little resemblance to the *real* relationship between Belarus and Russia (Hidekaz will occasionally ignore history for comedy, something his history buff fans generally do not), and in a series with someone as tsundere as Switzerland and kuudere as Austria, it’s good to have a yandere to complete the set.

I had mentioned in my review of Volume 1 that I thought it would sell very well, and it would seem I was right – since that review, there’s only been one week where it hasn’t been in the NYT best-seller list, and it’s still there a good 3 months later. Only Naruto and Black Butler have had that kind of insane staying power. Hetalia fans (who are, not coincidentally, predominately female) love everything about Hetalia. The anime, the manga, the webcomic, the sketches, the drama CDs, the songs, the fanfic, the fanart, the cosplay. Hetalia is less a franchise than an industry. As such, my review is mostly irrelevant, but for the record: I thought this was a rather weak volume of Hetalia, but enjoyed it nevertheless.